I definitely believe that a physicalist account of consciousness is possible. Out of the various theories we have covered so far, none of them provide a thoroughly convincing argument for or against physicalism and the overall nature of the mind. However, there are certain issues raised by the various theories that I am inclined to accept.
Harman’s theory of representationalism is an attractive theory because it aims to preserve functionalism. The issue of qualia is tackled head-on. He says that qualia are representations of the world that arise from external properties of what we are seeing. I see no substance in the illusion argument raised against representationalism because it does not do anything to disprove Harman’s theory. The mental image of a bent stick that is obtained from seeing a stick half-submerged in water cannot be an intrinsic property of our mental state because of the very nature of the way that mental image is obtained. The light reflecting off the portions of the stick above the water surface and below the water surface reach our eyes from different angles, causing an illusion of bentness. But our consciousness of this refraction causes us to understand that the bentness is not a mental image arisen from some inherent quality of our mental states. Rather, it is a property of the representation of the object we observe. However, when it comes to certain emotional states and perspectival experience, to view them as representations of external properties seems to be less intuitive, and I cannot bring myself to accept it. Also, the entire theory seems to be saying that the real world around us is not actually, directly experienced by us- we just experience representations, which is a view I cannot get behind.
Papineau’s theory to me seems to be a nice way to tie all the loose ends together. I like the fact that he presents the view that there are two ways of thinking about the same substance. It seems to present a very refreshing perspective on the arguments against physicalism by explaining many of the aspects of the ‘mental’ as ‘phenomenal concepts’, rather than actual, existent entities. I am not fully convinced with his view, but it definitely seems to be the best one we have been presented with so far.
What do you take to be the best response to the arguments against physicalism concerning consciousness? (epiphenomenalism; natural property dualism; representationalism; conceptual dualism)
Conceptual dualism presents a strong intuitive pull. Papineau’s central premise asserts that humans have two ways of understanding our world. This fits well into a twenty-first century conception of our existence, where empirical, factual knowledge is valued, but individual experience is (of course) not eliminated. To restate Papineau’s argument: everything is material, yet we have two different means by which to understand any given physical entity: one from a removed, third-person knowledge perspective and the other from the first-person introspective experiential perspective.
This argument gives an explanation for the difference between understanding based on a “learned/book knowledge” and understanding based on experience, which Jackson attempts to delineate in the knowledge argument.
The Dennet materialist response to Jackson’s Mary thought experiment would be to assert that Mary’s full factual knowledge of the visual system renders the knowledge argument inert because she could not have learned anything new upon going outside: to know all of the physical properties is to know the phemonenal qualities, i.e. what it is like. However, nearly everyone in class had a visceral reaction to that materialist argument. To call the experience of redness a fact seemed unpalatable. However, property dualism and the concession to some non-causative mental aspect of our existence also seems implausible. To me, property dualism is akin to taking the problem of experience and qualia, and not actually dealing with it, but putting it up on a shelf where it exists, but does nothing. As we have seen through the ability arguments, experiential understanding arguable gives us ‘something more’ in our mental perception of the world, in terms of our ability to introspect and imagine using the new “redness.” Therefore, as Papineau asserts, property dualism is implausible, and much better explained through the innate difference we perceive between the two types of understanding, as he labels concepts (ways of conceptualizing the world).
Although not perfect (and it still allows for an explanatory gap), Papineau’s argument is thus far the only argument that allows for some knowledge that may be beyond human explanation, but doesn’t deny the extraordinary advances of scientific discovery of the material basis of much of our existence. Therefore, at this point in our societal conception of the world, Papineau’s has the most appeal based on what we know and can conceive of knowing
We have recently covered three main challenges to a physicalist account of consciousness: the knowledge argument about the existence of an explanatory gap between qualia and the physical, Chalmers’ ‘failure of functional definition’ argument, and the conceivability arguments (which argue that zombies and inverted spectra are possible). We have also looked at four possible responses to these challenges, of which I find myself supporting Papineau’s Phenomenal Concepts Strategy. This is not because I find it particularly compelling or revolutionarily shocking, but more because I find the alternatives unconvincing or lacking.
To begin with, I find the idea of property dualism infeasible, and as such I must dismiss epiphenomenalism and natural property dualism immediately. It is worth noting that Chalmer gives us no definitive reason to accept his panpsychism over ephiphenomalism other than that epipheninomalism’s denial of experience’s causal efficacy seems bizarre, an argument that I find severely lacking. All the same, I reject both of these responses because they rely on property dualism, which I do not believe can be true.
I admit that I do not have as firm a grasp of Harman’s representationalism as I would like. The idea that all qualia are simply representations of something else does not seem intuitively correct (though I admit that intuitions can be tragically incorrect). This seems to be unable to account for certain emotional states or moods, and at the very least is a weird way to view qualia.
This leaves Papineau’s idea of phenomenal concepts, or concept dualism. This seems to capture the difference between physical facts about red and red qualia that so many critics of physicalism were so concerned with (through the introduction of material and phenomenal concepts). It does not, however, necessitate a rejection of physicalism or an acceptance of property dualism. By declaring that phenomenal concepts are conceptually irreducible to physical states, Papineau allows for fundamental differences between mental states and other physical states. I do not, however, understand why it will always be impossible to deduce phenomenal concepts from material concepts a priori. Given that we could know a posteriori, it seems that with extensive enough study, we could find reliable correlations that we could use to determine a prior which phenomenal concept was formed by different material concepts.
I’m going to start by saying that I don’t think I’m really ‘convinced’ by any of these arguments one way or the other. In other words, it seems unlikely to me that I’m going to be changing the way I look at the world now that I’ve been exposed to all of them. I can’t quite pinpoint why this is, but it could be because we’ve seen so many convincing-sounding theories get fundamentally disproven on the basis of 1 or 2 simple thought experiments. Alternatively, it could be because none of the theories even approach what one might call ‘being accessible’ – that is – none of them are presented in a way that is especially exciting or intuitive. I understand that some of the concepts are fairly complicated and hard to conceptualize on their own, but adding in dozens of complex and seemingly unnecessary terms doesn’t really help to address that. I find myself craving a ‘simple english’ version of each of the theories… a version that I can read and think about without having to consult a dictionary and an encyclopedia of philosophy topics. Put another way, I wish that the wording of each of the theories wasn’t such a barrier to actually thinking about them. As it stands, I find myself starting to lose interest before I really achieve understanding, and this is caused (at least in part) by the fact that all of the philosophical ‘jargon’ seems to distance the theories (conceptually) from the actual issues that they’re trying to address.
All of that being said, I think the theory that makes the most sense to me is the phenomenal concept strategy. The main reason for this, I think, is the fact that it seems to ‘hedge its bets’ in a certain sense. In other words, it acknowledges that there’s something about qualia that we can’t understand without experiencing them, but it also incorporates physicalist and functionalist ideas. This (somewhat surprisingly) actually makes sense to me; it makes sense that we can’t reduce phenomenal concepts to material ones, since that would imply that we could learn what red looks like simply by learning all about our visual systems. At the same time, it also makes sense that we should be able to identify a certain neural pathway that is identical to seeing red (an idea that very much agrees with my inner neuroscientist). To use another example, it seems reasonable to assume that we could never really know what pain feels like simply by knowing lots of information about pain, but it also seems reasonable to assume that there is a neural pathway that is fairly reliably associated with the feeling of pain. Indeed, the very difference between phenomenal and material concepts (knowing about a feeling versus knowing what it feels like) seems refreshingly intuitive – it makes perfect sense to think that there might be a fundamental gap between the ability to recognize a feeling (i.e. “that person is clearly in pain”) and the ability to experience it yourself (i.e. “oh, so that’s what pain feels like”).
All in all, I find the PCS to be the most intuitive and understandable of the theories that we’ve looked at recently, especially when it’s compared to theories like representationalism (“you don’t actually experience the real world at all!”).
PS. Apologies if I misunderstood the prompt or if my writing doesn’t make much sense – it’s very late and my brain is totally fried.
Qualia are a tricky topic. I see the internal mind and the external world as two different manifestations of the same entity that then causes a balanced interaction between the mind and the external world. Thus, it is difficult to side with only one theory of mind, as opposed to taking the most comprehensive sections of theories and combining them to create a new theory.
Overall, I reject physicalism due to the presence of the ontological gap, property dualism conceding that there are deeper mental substances, and the difficulty of explaining 1st person experience of phenomenal concepts. I agree that our mental states are representations of the world; in order to form a mental state one must take pre-experienced concepts and if complex, combine them in the imagination. We are able to experience through our abilities. These abilities are made possible by our physical body: sight, touch, ect. Thus, the ability hypothesis and representationalism are given credit here. Yet, I would like to take it one step further; yes, as property dualism states, physical entities give rise to mental entities, yet I want to use this as a gateway to substance dualism, which I will not discuss here.
I agree that qualia are non-physical, for how could they be, if the imagination realm exists outside of the physical realm? Qualia are indeed caused by physical stimuli, ability perception, but then the mind does something else with this physical stimuli. It interprets it, kind of like representationalism, but something that is intrinsic of the mind, as Chalmer might say with naturalistic property dualism, phenomenalism, and panpsychism, with a missing dash of substance dualism to bring it full circle.
I am convinced by the physicalist account of consciousness, and especially drawn to Papineau’s conceptual dualsim. Papineau responds to the knowledge argument by saying that when Mary leaves the black and white room and experiences red from the first time, something new is gained. She knew all the facts about red before she left the room, and this status remains unchanged. When she leaves the room, Mary gains a new concept upon experiencing red. The new perspective could not be attained by simply “knowing the facts” about red; the color must be experienced first-hand. However, the thing that is gained by seeing red is a concept, which can accounted for in physical terms. Papineau’s view appeals to me because in considering the knowledge argument, I kept running into a problem: when Mary leaves the room, I think she has a new experience of seeing red which she couldn’t fully understand before, but I don’t think that this new experience has to be attributed to the acquisition of “new physical facts”. It seems like something different to me, and Papineau explanation of a new perspective, an understanding of a concept seems to make sense. Qualia is a concept that seems always just out of reach. We can interrogate our minds about what we think the essence of quaila is, but I think the “way things seem to be to us” will remain abstract and unsolveable. Papineau’s argument makes sense to me because it recognizes something beyond just the physical facts, but takes the idea of how it feels to experience something down from the pedestal of qualia and defines it as something I can grapple with. Papineua defines brain states and qualia as material concepts about a fact. This ultimately physicalist account of consciousness convinces me.
Out of the many responses that we have read arguing against the possibility of physicalism, Papineau’s phenomenal concepts strategy resonates the most with me. Papineau makes a distinction between material concepts and phenomenal concepts, stating that both are necessary in order to have a truly complete understanding of the world around us. By separating phenomenal concepts from material concepts, Papineau allows for two seemingly disparate ways of viewing the world to meld together – and this gives a more holistic approach to understanding human consciousness and how we perceive the world. Papineau agrees with Jackson’s argument for an explanatory gap but rejects the ontological gap, thereby allowing for qualia to be identical to physical properties. This, for me, is the most appealing aspect of Papineau’s argument: phenomenal concepts, which are ones we discover introspectively, can be explained physically. By defining phenomenal concepts in this way, Papineau includes functionalism and the PNI theory to be possible explanations for our internal processes. But he does not limit our consciousness to just that. Material concepts, which are part of the third person, causal world, also affect how we view certain things – this is why Papineau’s argument is one of concept dualism. We then also have an externalist perspective to understanding the world. The really remarkable thing about Papineau’s theory is that it argues that we need both physical and external accounts of everything in order to have true understanding, and I think that this is definitely the most accurate way of describing human perception and comprehension that we have encountered thus far.
Although I often appreciate the scientific seeming and rational side of physicalism, I understand why many people would argue against it. It is reassuring, almost comforting, to think that there is another side to the mind apart from our physical self (and pretty scary to think of ourselves as purely physical). However, the arguments we have read about in response to physicalism have not yet convinced me. First of all, I am not convinced that Harmon’s represenationalism can truly account for things such as emotions and feelings. Yes, having qualia as representative of our external environment makes sense, but I do not think it can fully account for our more internal feelings about the world. Property dualism does not convince me either- the idea that all objects are physical yet have physical and mental properties to them does not really seem to capture the essence of consciousness. Like I wrote more about last week, this view seems to place the importance on the object, while in fact consciousness is a personal, individual, experience- it is the properties of an individual’s perceptions that create consciousness, not the objects themselves. I do not really understand how an object itself can have a mental aspect to it. To me, epiphenomenalism makes more sense- the idea that qualitative properties are caused by physical properties but the qualitative properties themselves do not cause other physical properties or events. Although this does seem to invalidate the idea of free will, it at least can account for all ranges of experience. The reason this does not seem plausible to me is that consciousness seems too complex to have developed evolutionarily and yet play no role in our survival. I also do see some logic in Papineau’s phenomenal concepts strategy- I like that he views phenomenal, or experiencial, facts as different from physical facts. This is a good response to Jackson’s “Case of Mary”- Papineau argues that Mary can know all the physical facts about seeing the color red, yet she can learn a new phenomenal fact or concept about the color red when she experiences it first hand. However, this just seems like a different way to think about what we “know” about something. I still am much more convinced by physicalism and theories that take the neural aspects of our experience and current scientific knowledge into account.
At first, I felt the most support for the Jackson’s knowledge argument, but when presented with Papineau’s view of the knowledge argument, I believe he has the best response. In Jackson’s knowledge argument, Mary does know all the physical facts about red when she is in the black and white room, but she has never experienced red. When she leaves the room and experiences red for the first time, Jackson believe that Mary has learned new facts about red. Originally, I agreed with this argument. I did not think it was possible for Mary to imagine the color red without experiencing it. Yet, I had trouble agreeing with Jackson that the experience of seeing red was necessarily new facts. Papineau’s argument solved this dilemma. Papineau agrees with Jackson that the experience of seeing red is different from knowing all the physical facts, but no new facts are learned when you experience red. Rather a new concept is learned. Its not new facts but a new point of view. Anybody can know all the facts about red and that is one concept of red from the third person point of view. When you experience red though, you see it in a completely different light and one that can only come from the first person point of view. I believe that the argument for the different point of views presented during an experience is the best.
I agree with Jennifer and Madeline (below) concerning the best response to the arguments against physicalism concerning consciousness as being Papineau’s phenomenal concepts strategy. This strategy rejects property dualism, accepting conceptual dualism to hold that the difference between your first person experience and your knowledge of the physical is a matter of knowing something in terms of material and phenomenal concepts, concepts that allow us to understand the same things in the world. For example, redness is a qualitative property arising from a specific brain state, both different ways of knowing the same thing. Mary, when leaving her colorless world, does not learn anything new about the world when she sees the rose. All that she learns are just new concepts of the same knowledge of which she was already aware.
It could be interpreted by Papineau’s analysis that phenomenal concepts are “quotational” concepts—concepts that contain the states to which they refer. He argues that actual phenomenal states will be embedded within phenomenal concepts. In other accounts of phenomenal concepts, these concepts have been conceptually isolated. The phenomenal concepts strategy makes the most sense to me in terms of a response to arguments against physicalism because it allows cases such as people with color inversion/blindness to be conceivable. It can be interpreted that, although the physically duplicate person may perceive colors differently, no phenomenal concepts are determined to apply to them solely based on this physical duplicity. Therefore, instead of having “this” experience, the duplicate would have “that” one.
According to proponents of the phenomenal concepts strategy, as humans, we possess a special set of concepts for referring to our own experiences, which are conceptually isolated from any other concepts that we possess. Due to the fact that phenomenal concepts are isolated, a physicalist would conclude that gaps in explanation could exist, such as zombies or inverts. Chalmers’ argument against this strategy is problematic in itself, committing a “fallacy of equivocation”. If Chalmers’ argument does not seem to stand a chance against the phenomenal concepts strategy, then this strategy can be seen as an even more powerful response to the arguments against physicalism concerning consciousness.
I am not sure whether I think that a physicalist account of consciousness. I guess I would say that I don’t think any of the arguments we have read so far give us reason to believe that it must be. Why? Well, it seems like one of the things that is most fundamentally at issue here is whether qualia are intrinsic properties of experience. If they are, then (I think) they would not be amenable to functional explanation, and thus functionalism would be leaving something out. Another way to say this might be that the inverted spectrum argument, if one buys it, could be marshalled against all physicalist arguments. Some of the thinkers we’ve read are very skeptical of qualia as intrinsic properties of experience — Harman, especially, thinks that our impression that this is so is a misguided mirage, and Dennett, though we haven’t covered his ideas in detail, seems to think along similar lines. Still, I must admit that I feel very leery of buying these sorts of views. They are staggeringly counterintuitive to me. That’s not always the best indicator of things being right or wrong, but I’d like to at least try to hash out why they strike me as so backwards.
I liked the metaphor we discussed in class about qualia being something like the ‘paint’ of our mental representations. However, I don’t think I agree with Harman that this ‘paint’ is utterly inaccessible to our conscious experiences. I think it is probably inaccessible to the concepts and language that we use to communicate with one another, but I feel pretty strongly that our experience is not limited to the sorts of things these concepts can tackle — it seems to me like we can have experiences which are ineffable, and possibly beyond or outside of conceptual thinking. To put this differently, my intuition is that we can have experiences of pure aisthesis, experiences of seeing which are not seeing-as, experiences T. S. Eliot describes in Four Quartets: “when, under ether, the mind is conscious but conscious of nothing”. I guess really the only evidence I have for this is my own experience, which I’m sure would not be very compelling to people like Harman… but I sort of wonder if they might encounter something similar, under the right sort of circumstances of introspection. For instance, though I’m certainly no expert on it, the limited experience I have with mindfulness meditation has kind of felt to me like the practice of watching my mental ‘paint’ dry. My first year seminar (with Matt and Gioia! 🙂 ) consisted largely in this, and a lot of the way I conceived of (ha, somewhat ironic) the meditation practice was in terms of unsticking my experience from the ‘maps’ — concepts, representations, pattern-finding mechanisms — that certain parts of my brain usually impose upon it automatically. Now, I definitely didn’t ever achieve this sort of unsticking, because those parts of my brain (and everyone’s respective brain, pretty much) are very talkative and busy. But there were moments and flickerings that gave me the feeling that it really is possible; e.g., I remember starting to become conscious of my internal monologue as something like a babble of meaningless sounds instead of words with semantic content, or becoming aware that I really couldn’t see color in my peripheral vision, or seeing the houses out the windows in front of us not really look like houses anymore. That might not sound like very conclusive or dramatic evidence of non-representational qualia, but I think it still points me in the direction of it — at the very least it seems possible to peel back a whole lot of the layers of representational content that our perceptual experience usually has. Maybe there’s some point in the metaphorical onion which one arrives at and can’t peel back any further, but I don’t know… it seems to me at that point one would have arrived at something pretty different from what we normally think of as representation. I really do think the subject requires more phenomenological investigation, though — at least in order for me to feel like I’ve got a grasp on it.
Now that I write all this I’m realising I haven’t even gotten around to addressing Papineau’s phenomenal concepts strategy, and I’ve already generated quite a mass of verbiage, so don’t want to go on too much longer — I guess I’ll just say for now that I agree an explanatory gap doesn’t necessarily entail an ontological gap, but I don’t think we can really conclude that there definitely ISN’T one either. Corollary to this, it seems a little like overstepping to me to say that we can KNOW a posteriori that phenomenal concepts refer to the same things as their physical/functional correlates, just because they are so consistently correlated. I feel like here a conceivability argument could be pressed into service, not to say that the mental and the physical MUST be categorically incommensurable, but simply to say that it’s imaginable they might be, without contradicting any of the data we have about neuroscience. And if we were to go this far, we’d already one foot in the boat that’s headed to property-dualism-land. I also think the question of WHY out phenomenal concepts are the particular way they are (if one wants to hold that they do have intrinsic properties!) is puzzling and outstanding, especially if it can’t be predicted from or conceptually reduced to a third person depiction of the situation.
I find that the phenomenal concepts strategy provides the best response to the arguments against physicalist conceptions of consciousness. Literature by Papineau integrates the epiphenomenal “explanatory gap” and physicalist notions of experience – that is, it acknowledges the space between qualia and physical properties, yet also denies that there is an ontological gap. This strategy, also known as subjective physicalism/inflationary physicalism, claims that everything is physical (no substance dualism here) but that concepts can be either physical phenomenal. A material and phenomenal concept can be applied to one state, and this would not denote two different things – the point of reference would be the same but the meanings would be different. Therefore, functional state can be experienced in the third-person, causal sense, as well as in an experiential and qualitative sense. Further, phenomenal concepts are not reducible to material concepts, yet both refer to the same functional properties.
Though it may seem wishy-washy to straddle the lines of functionalism and epiphenomenalism and reject property dualism all together, Papineau’s phenomenal concepts proposal is intriguing and comprehensive. It is certainly believable, as it combines all the appealing elements of both sides: it acknowledges the explanatory gap, leaving some mystery open as to how we can bridge the phenomenal and the physical, yet it provides an ontological answer that satisfies functionalism enthusiasts by establishing a conceptual dichotomy. Physicalists will be happy to know that there is nothing immaterial in substance or in property; the “qualitative” is just a concept that applies simultaneously to any physiological/functional state. Yet Papineau’s argument does not reject the idea of experience, allowing the question “what does it feels like?” to remain a part of the essence of mental states.
All in all, this strategy does a good job of integrating past arguments into a single cohesive and comprehensive stance. It is appealing and believable because it takes into account many different perspectives on consciousness, and works to pick out details that are both logical and plausible from each.
Along with many people who have posted on the blog so far, I feel most comfortable with Papineau’s phenomenal concepts strategy (leading to conceptual, but not property or substance, dualism) as an account of consciousness. The beauty of Papineau’s theory is that it does not reduce the concept of, say, knowing by third person objective knowledge what it is like to see red (as Mary does when she is inside the room) to the actual experience of seeing red (as she experiences when she leaves the room). Papineau’s distinction between these two mental states is essential in order to give a satisfying account of qualia. Jackson wants to say that Mary learns something over and above physical facts when she leaves the room. But does she really? Yes, it is true that one of the premises of Jackson’s knowledge argument is that she knows all the physical facts about seeing red. And yet, it seems important to make a distinction, as Papineau does, between knowing those facts from a first person point of view as opposed to a third person point of view. When Mary is inside the room, she sees the physical facts about seeing red from a third person point of view, say, in diagrams about which regions are activated in the brain when a person sees red. When she leaves the room, she does not gain some new non-physical knowledge about the world, but rather her brain enters precisely the brain state that she had been studying inside the room. And yet, now it is her brain that is in that brain state, as opposed to her brain being in a brain state thinking about that brain state. That is, the brain state she is in when she sees red is different from the brain state she is in when she is studying what it is like to see red–a crucial difference. This is intuitive and it is difficult to see how it would make sense otherwise. An important benefit, in my opinion, of Papineau’s phenomenal concepts strategy is that it does not force us out of physicalism, which I tend to want to hold on to unless I have conclusive evidence that there must be something non-physical about consciousness. Although I like Chalmers’ idea of panpsychism and the ethical implications it would have if it were true, I don’t feel convinced of it yet. Historically, science has proven repeatedly that phenomena for which we do not have physical explanation turn out to be physically explained. Still, if anything were to be unexplainable in physical terms, it would probably be consciousness.
There are three primary criticisms of the physicalist account of consciousness. These arguments include Jackson’s knowledge argument, Chalmers’ “failure of functional definition” argument, and the conceivability arguments. I feel that Papineau’s phenomenal concepts strategy not only provides the best response to those arguments against physicalism, but that it also presents a compelling and intuitive argument that feels correct. First, Jackson wants to argue that there is a fundamental distinction between qualia and physical properties such that qualia are actually epiphenomena. Jackson’s evidence for this argument is that Mary learns new facts (the experience of redness) upon leaving the room, and since she already knew all physical facts, the new qualitative experience must be non-physical. Yet we have mentioned several problems with Jackson’s argument in class, and Papineau does an excellent job of refuting it. Through concept dualism, Papineau accepts that there is an explanatory gap but not an ontological gap between consciousness and the physical. This means that there are material concepts understandable from a 3rd person point of view and phenomenal concepts understandable only from a 1st person point of view. Returning to Mary, Papineau separates “redness” from 3rd person facts one could learn from a textbook. Thus, the phenomenal experience of redness cannot be deduced from physical facts Mary knows, but when Mary does experience the phenomenal concept of redness, she only gains a new concept but not a new fact. Critically, the phenomenal concept Mary gains is still explicable physically.
The “failure of functional definition” argument posits that qualia and consciousness are not functionally explicable, and thus physicalism is false. However, I feel that consciousness and qualia certainly can be explained functionally. Consciousness increases the evolutionary fitness of human beings. Being conscious provides an innate awareness of one’s surroundings that can be extremely useful. For example, my consciousness allows me to suppress instincts and biological drives such as thirst when it is beneficial for me to do so. If I’m hiking in the woods and become thirsty, my body may tell me to drink from the cool stream nearby, but I stop myself from doing so because I’m conscious that it will likely make me sick later. An unconscious organism would be driven only by its biological needs, and it would thus drink the water. Thus, consciousness can be an extremely valuable tool in terms of evolutionary fitness.
Finally, the conceivability zombie argument posits that physicalism is false because the unconscious zombies would violate the principle of logical supervenience of the mental on the physical. I’m not sure what Papineau’s exact response would be, but I feel that the conceivability argument doesn’t prove anything. Just saying that something is conceivable does not mean it has any relevance. Any argument can be refuted or supported if the fact that something is conceivable is taken as legitimate evidence in support of or against a given argument.
I think that Papineau is spot on with his phenomenal concepts strategy. The big issue with Jackson’s knowledge argument apropos Mary is the conclusion Jackson draws. There is nothing except clever and inadequate reasoning to support the idea that upon Mary seeing red, and thereby “learning” something new, physicalism falls apart. Dennet gets closer to the point. Who’s to say that Mary “knowing everything there is to know” will afford her the same phenomenal experience as seeing red? It’s absurd and implausible to imagine that someone could explain to me what a new spice (call it xspice) tastes like and that I could, from her description alone, have an experience anything akin to tasting xspice. What does make sense, though, is that, after having xspice described, I have some materialist concept of what xspice is like. After tasting it (i.e., after having the experience of tasting it) my concept of what xspice is like has changed. I now have a phenomenal concept of the spice. There is nothing in Papineau’s argument to suggest that the universe is non-physical. Tasting xspice (seeing red for the first time) is a physical experience that affords us a new (phenomenal) concept of that experience. In that way, it offers a comfortable balance between my desire that the universe be explained in physical terms and the difficulties that qualia present.
However, Papineau’s claim that qulia are type identical to physical states is troubling. I don’t see how he purports to solve the inverted spectrum issue, and I hope to discuss this more in class. By and large, though, I like the idea of concept dualism. It is intuitive and instructive, and I believe it fills in a lot of the gaps left behind by other theories.
I believe that a physicalist account is not only possible, but necessary for developing a cohesive interpretation of consciousness, whether they involve intricacies that are tangible or not. While it may be difficult to report on phenomena such as qualia, we should not hastily assume that they are properties separate from the physical simply because there exists a semantic barrier for explaining said phenomena.
Which is why Papineau’s conceptual dualism is so appealing to me, since it separates qualia and facts as material and phenomenal concepts while refraining from making the huge leap that qualia are nonphysical. I can easily understand why qualia is often placed in a different category as more tangible properties, but I would not go as far as to say that notions such as the Knowledge argument is enough to debunk the physicalist perspective. If anything, these arguments are distracting us from the core problems we face in giving a physical account of the universe. Naturalistic property dualism makes a distinction between the “easy” and “hard” problems of consciousness, and I honestly believe that we will never be able to solve the “hard” problems, in part because we don’t really need to in order to come to the realization that consciousness exists, whether you want to call it as such or as a series of physiological properties working together to provide the complete experience.
I definitely believe that a physicalist view of consciousness is not only conceivable, but very possible. Like many have already stated, I think that with the forwarding of neuroscience, we will close the explanatory gap and be able to explain and accept physicalism. When I think back to Jackson’s thought experiment, I did have a hard time believing that Mary could walk into a color world and know from red was from the objective facts. Last week, I proposed that we do perhaps perceive the frequencies of color in an objective way subconsciously and therefore, Mary could conceivably know what red was. Nevertheless, I find it hard to turn the world into an objectively physical place.
Before reading Papineau, I was attracted to property dualism and epiphenomenalism. I liked epiphenomenalism because it separated out the physical from the experiential, ie. qualia. I like to think that there is more to the world than strictly objective facts, that the experience does matter. However, I would say that Papineau’s phenomenal concepts strategy fills in the current scientific gaps better than any theory. I again, felt like it was a little bit of a cop out, but it eases my mind more than the other theories. There are fundamentally two different concepts. But consciousness, is still essentially left fully developed. Maybe some day, with the advancement with of science and further questioning, we can really close the explanatory gap.
The phenomenal concept strategy is the most convincing response to physicalism; much of the appeal of this theory is the fact that it seems not to be too extreme and provides explanations for many of the questions that crop up from choosing a purely physicalist or a purely property dualist point of view when considering consciousness. Concept dualism accounting for the explanatory gap is one of the appealing facets of the theory. The explanatory gap seems like something intuitive; there is more to consciousness than something physical. However, removing physicality from all facets of conscious knowledge and experience is not a leap I’m willing to make quite yet. The two concepts of knowledge described by concept dualism — material concepts and phenomenal concepts — seem to accept some of the most rational aspects of physicalism which filling the explanatory gap. Phenomenal concepts fill the explanatory gap by allowing for a definition that encapsulates the difference between experiencing something and possessing knowledge of it. Of course, this experience is some form of knowledge, which concept dualism allows for. Material concepts do seem separate from phenomenal concepts, something that especially makes sense in the context of the thought experiment regarding Mary. Mary’s knowledge of everything regarding the color “red” is not invalid, but it still does not encompass everything regarding the experience of red. Phenomenal concept strategy is the simplest explanation so far of consciousness that takes into account some aspects of physical experience; this is why it’s the most appealing theory (so far) regarding consciousness.
I think a physicalist account of consciousness is the only ultimate possibility, but none of the philosophers thus far have given a legitimate description of how it can happen. As no such adequate theory has been suggested, we are left with an explanatory gap, leaving a dualist theory the most plausible based on what we know for now. Ultimately though I think physicalism will unseat dualism and provide a comprehensive explanation of consciousness. We live in a physical world, constantly dealing in cause and effect. As far as I’m concerned, something non-physical cannot give rise to something physical, so the only way to explain our consciousness is in a physicalist theory. (Assuming that you believe your consciousness has bearing on your actions, which I do; if you think phenomena and consciousness have no effect on experience , then epiphenomenalism gives an adequate description, and you are set). But, we have yet to discover a way to ascribe our conscious thought to a physical theory.
Papineau tries to give a solution, saying that phenomenal concepts (comprising of abilities but not reducible to them) and material concepts are just two ways of thinking of things, and provides a physical account with cause and effect. But here he does not really show how it would be possible that these phenomenal concepts are functional; he does not pinpoint cause and effect, so I see it really as a dualist theory but given physicalist descriptions.
Chalmers provides an interesting approach with his panpscyhism; phenomena are intrinsic to the outside world, and our experience is merely representation. The trouble here comes when we try to describe love, moods or other emotions. Are they really just representations of the outside world? I don’t think so. Similarly when you see stars or have a hallucination, these would be representations of the outside world. Again though I think this is something happening inside our head, a lens created by our consciousness, not just a representation of the world. Here rises the explanatory gap, the separator between dualists and physicalists.
For now we don’t have an answer, so to maintain these aspects of consciousness as intrinsic to myself rather than the outside world, I must ascribe to a dualist account to give them efficacy, but as I stated before, I don’t believe there is any way for non-physical to give rise to physical, so in that way there must be a physicalist description, once we have the means to discover it.
What do you take to be the best response to the arguments against physicalism concerning consciousness?
Like the majority of the responses, I personally float towards Papineau’s “phenomenal concept strategy.” Andrew’s response made me laugh and he had a very valid point. “Just because we do not understand something, that doesn’t mean that greater, primal entities are the sole causes.” A physicalist account of consciousness is completely possible! Consciousness is not a simple concept, but the concept dualism idea works for me. This argument rejects property dualism, which claims that there is only one kind of substance—physical. But, however, there are two different kinds of properties—physical and mental. Therefore, in this view, the mental states cannot be reduced to physical states. Also, this view holds that there are two fundamentally different types of concepts of mental states: phenomenal concepts and material concepts. The implications for this view then hold that mental states are reducible to physical states and that subjectivity is irreducible to objectivity. This argument eases my mind in a way. The phenomenal concept part that acknowledges our first person only understandable point of view specifically satisfies my belief because it leaves room for the idea of individuality! It is disheartening to think that we are not special or significant. In Papineau’s argument, we can acknowledge that science had only tell us so much and that it has its limitations. Personally, this is completely fine with me. I believe my experience of drinking/tasting coffee is different then other peoples.
I believe that Papineau’s phenomenal concepts strategy provides the best response to the arguments raised against a physicalist account of consciousness. Thus far, we have considered the main arguments against physicalist consciousness to be the knowledge argument, the inverted spectrum/zombie conceivability arguments, and Chalmers’ “failure of functional definition” argument. While Papineau does not address the inverted spectrum argument or the failure of functional definition arguments directly, Papineau’s view solves the issues raised against physicalism by the knowledge argument deftly. With respect to this argument, Papineau reaches an attractive compromise between the much harsher versions of consciousness proposed by physicalism and epiphenomenalism; although Mary has knowledge of all the physical concepts regarding color and vision, she still lacks the 1st person phenomenal concept of what exactly it “feels” like to see red until it is presented to her – thus affording a type of explanatory gap but still retaining physicalism by claiming additionally that we can explain phenomenal concepts physically. Although I don’t know how Papineau might respond to the failure of functional definition argument, it seems as if he would have a relatively effective defense against the conceivability arguments, mainly that those arguments assume an ontological gap between qualia and physical properties, and that this simply is not the case.
Another aspect of Papineau’s solution that I found to be particularly appealing is that, from my point of view, it relied almost solely on logic as opposed to on broadly hypothetical thought experiments that normally leave me uncertain as to the validity of the argument. However, one facet of Papineau’s argument that I still do find troubling is his assertion that qualia are token identical to physical states despite the differences he wants to claim between phenomenal and physical concepts. It seems to me that if we can describe a conscious mental state – such as the qualia experienced while eating an apple – in physical terms (for example, using the psychoneural identity theory), then Papineau’s basis for his overall argument, that these two types of concepts differ in meaning, begins to collapse. How then does this differ from strict physicalism in which mental states are identical to physical states? A phenomenal concepts supporter might retort that there is some difference between qualia and a phenomenal concept, however I think this would be a difficult gap to bridge regarding Papineau’s aforementioned claims about qualia as solely a type of first-person phenomenal concept. This is a divide that I hope to discuss further in the upcoming discussion and lectures.
I believe that the best response to the arguments against physicalism concerning consciousness is the phenomenal concepts strategy proposed by David Papineau. His idea of conceptual dualism is almost a middle ground between the physicalist accounts of consciousness and the views of property dualism concerning consciousness. The key to Papineau’s view is that he makes a distinction between material concepts and phenomenal concepts. Phenomenal concepts are concepts of qualia that are only understandable from a first-person perspective while material concepts are those which are understandable from the third-person perspective and are items in the world. Also, both phenomenal concepts and material concepts have the same referent, but are different at the level of meaning.
What I find most attractive about this claim is that it acknowledges and incorporates the intuitive notion that phenomenal experience, or qualia, is different than other material facts of concepts. This view states that subjectivity can’t be reduced to objectivity since we can never know phenomenal concepts by studying material concepts. In this way, this view answers the problem of the knowledge argument against physicalism proposed by Jackson. Based on Papineau’s view, however, he would agree that Mary would learn a new fact when she exits the black and white room and experiences the color red for the first time. The explanatory gap, which is what the knowledge argument heavily leans on is therefore accepted as true in the phenomenal concepts strategy. I find this to be very appealing because an explanatory gap between the physical and qualia is highly intuitive because consciousness seems to be an amorphous concept that is also highly subjective and not easily understood or grasped. However, although this view concedes the explanatory gap, it is still a physicalist view because Papineau’s argument denies that there is an ontological gap between the physical and qualia, which means that it holds that mental states and therefore consciousness are reducible to physical states.
This conceptual dualism is appealing because it really does incorporate intuitions of concept dualism while maintaining a physicalist view of consciousness. When thinking from the lens of a scientist, I do not want to concede that qualia are non-physical and some sort of other entity outside of the physical world. However, when considering my own experiences and when I try to give an account of qualia, it is difficult not to acknowledge that there is some aspect of phenomenal experience that are inherently subjective and not fully understandable and reducible to objectivity. Therefore, the phenomenal concept strategy gives a satisfactory physical account of qualia as defining it as ontologically physical in nature, but allows for a fundamental distinction to be drawn between material concepts and phenomenal concepts. So, I believe that the phenomenal concepts strategy gives the best account of consciousness that we have seen so far in this course.
Intuitively speaking, Papineau’s “phenomenal concept strategy” seems, to me, to be the most satisfying response to arguments against phsyicalism. After reading Jackson’s article in favor of property dualism last week I was definitely left unsatisfied with the implications of his argument. I think the “Mary” thought experiment is effective in that it points out important differences between qualia and so called “physical facts”, but it seems like an extraordinary jump in logic to conclude the existence of property dualism from this example. Many things can’t be learned without experience, but this does not seem like an adequate reason to throw out physicalism completely. If I memorized all the mechanics involved in riding a bike, I would still have to practice a fair amount in order really learn how to ride one. We shouldn’t take this to mean that some ultimate non-physical fact is standing in the way of me riding a bike perfectly on my first try. This kind of reasoning seemed to be leading me toward the ability hypothesis, but I can’t say that I found this explanation more satisfying than property dualism. Looking back, though I wouldn’t have articulated it this way a week ago, I think that Jackson’s argument just misses out on the fact that certain physical facts need to be learned via experience. Although humans are able to conceptualize hybrid/ intermediate experiences (like seeing a unicorn) without having experienced them, it’s very hard for us to fully “know” things we haven’t experienced. For instance, according to popular psychology (not sure how true this actually is), we can’t “invent” new faces: whenever we think or dream of people we give them faces of people we have already seen. Here there is no ability being performed, but there is just something about our brains that prevents us from making the conceptual jump involved in creating new qualia, in bridging the explanatory gap. All this to say, Papineau’s acceptance of both physicalism and the explanatory gap really appeal to me. I’m not sure if I completely buy the particular ideas of phenomenal versus material concepts, but I like where his overall argument ends up.
A physicalist account of consciousness seems entirely possible, and I find Papineau’s concept dualism the most persuasive argument for that possibility. It is perhaps the first physicalist theory we have studied to overcome the explanatory gap without resorting to the weak argument of ‘we might not know yet but we will,’ and it presents a plausible and rather intuitively satisfying response for the knowledge argument (experience is not a matter of different facts but of different perspectives on the same facts). Concept dualism is the only response to these criticisms of physicalism that does not seem to violate any of the more intrinsic beliefs about human experience to which I subscribe.
Epiphenomenalism and panpsychism, especially, seem problematic because they somehow undermine ‘facts’ that inform the way we navigate the world on a daily basis. Epiphenomenalism denies that mental events have any purpose or causality, and panpsychism claims everything has some kind of experience because mind is universal. These are two arguments rest on tenets I cannot help but reject purely out of gut instinct. I know that is weak reasoning, but I find myself embracing it anyway for two reasons. First, how can we claim mental events have no effects on the physical world, but use purely mental reasoning to make that argument? There is no functional explanation for the mental processes required to reason out such a theory, so it seems almost self-contradictory. If mental states and representations are merely incidental, then belief in epiphenomenalism is as well, so who cares? Second, the universal mind is problematic to me because it takes concepts regarding Cartesian privacy to the next level. It simultaneously requires that we be unaware of the ‘experiences’ of thermostats (at least I am unaware of them!) and believe that they are analogous to the complex experiences we personally have. Then again, given the instinctual nature of these thought processes I have to acknowledge the possibility that they are indicative of a cultural inheritance I am not evolved enough to ignore.
Representationalism is a slightly more believable argument for physicalism than epiphenomenalism and panpsychism, but, like we said in class it lacks the ability to adequately explain the more complex representations of emotions. This is a significant shortcoming and leads me to only partially support the theory, meaning I can get behind the fundamental reasoning, but cannot accept it as a completely adequate theory of consciousness.
I agree with the idea that the main differences between phenomenal and material aspects of experience can be explained through the mechanism by which we gain the experience. I believe that property dualism is an unhelpful theory that does not make a bold enough claim as substance dualism and doesn’t offer much of an explanation as to what these properties are. Having facts about qualia seems to be a stretch. Instead having different modes of thinking about a material fact or arriving at the same knowledge via different modes makes much more sense. A non-reductionist view of property dualism faces the same issues as substance dualism in its analysis of how mental properties and physical properties are causally related. If there are some mental properties, which are not reducible to physical structures then how do we explain the role of those properties and where they arise from if not from the physical world? Conceptual dualism provides a much more comprehensible explanation by claiming that it is not the actual properties but the ways in which we realize that these properties are inherently different that is important. The reason why our knowledge of all the material facts of red still doesn’t give us an accurate image of color is not because there are some non-material facts of the worlds. It is due to a manner of understanding what red is. While the inherent properties/facts/aspects of redness are not changed regardless of whether we read about them in the encyclopedia or see them in person, they are realized via different mechanisms and stored in different regions of the brain. The “mould” or concept of red we gain from looking at an apple can later be used to imagine what red looks like. Reading an encyclopedia would not allow one to create this image introspectively. The reason why this theory seems more reasonable is because it gives an account as to how neural structures can give rise to consciousness without merely saying that the mental and the physical are exactly identical. By doing so it provides us with an alternative account of how mental states and physical states are related and allows for mental states to have a physical basis, while still having their own functional role.
Right now, I seem to be leaning towards Papineau’s concept dualism. I especially like how he dealt with the knowledge argument while still recognizing the explanatory gap. It does seem logical that Mary would not be able to get the qualia of red while still inside her room. However, it seems more reasonable that this is due to differing methods of how we can learn things, than being due to an ontological gap. When first hearing of the knowledge argument, it seemed important that, while in the room, Mary was learning physical facts 2nd hand through symbolic representations from certain scientific equipment, which would not put her brain into the same states as if she directly experienced red. It seems reasonable to propose than phenomenal and physical concepts can refer to the same things but be irreducible to each other, while still both being physically explainable. However, something about the knowledge argument bothered me in general, but I’m not sure how much it actually affects the arguments’ outcomes. The knowledge argument uses the idea of a “physical fact” to mean some kind of objective, and in Mary’s case scientific, truth. Mary gets these from various machinery and previously conducted experiments. It seems fairly obvious that whatever society she lives in must be fairly advanced, so their science is probably very trustworthy. However, can she truly know all those physical facts with 100% certainty, without a doubt of any possible exceptions? Perhaps their science is so far advanced that this is possible, but it seems unlikely that she could know whether or not she does know those facts for certain. Also, while those facts are collected outside Mary, she only has access to them through qualia. She experiences them only as qualia of various colors and shapes, etc, and then, according to Papineau, it seems she manages to extract the objective, abstract physical facts from the qualia. Could physical facts be reduced to qualia then?
While I do believe that the further development of neuroscience may lead us to discover physical evidence and explanation of consciousness (ahem, Dennett), I do not think that any of the theories we have now suffice to do so. As it stands, we cannot define consciousness in physicalist terms and each of the four theories do their best, but are left wanting. Representationalism and concept dualism both seem like unfinished arguments to me, they don’t do a sufficient job of explaining consciousness related to experiences like love.
Substance dualists are closer, they at least acknowledge that phenomenal properties are in some way different from physical events, but even property dualism doesn’t, to me, appear 100% physicalist. I lean towards epiphenomenalism (though am not completely swayed by it) because, with the scientific data we have now, I have no choice but to believe that phenomenal experience must in some way be removed from, though still connected to my body. I am not Cartesian, I don’t believe in substance dualism, but there is an appeal to the idea that some part of us is removed from our bodies. But this leaves us with similar Cartesian problems. What connects epiphenomena to their physical causes? Once caused, can they exist without the other? Can they be replicated? These questions leave me looking toward, but not convinced by, the property dualist picture.
Physicalism is, in my opinion, completely plausible. Between the views we have examined that address the possibility (or lack thereof) of physicalism, the one that resonates that most with me is Papineau’s Phenomenal Concepts strategy. I believe that this is the most accurate theory of consciousness that we have read; as I interpreted it, the theory suggests that qualia and physical states are not necessarily different. This idea debunks theories of property dualism. And, being a scientifically minded person, I find it hard to believe that mental states and consciousness are on another level than physical states. Still, Papineau’s theory retains that there is an explanatory gap between consciousness and physical states, but this idea and the idea that qualia are physically derived are not mutually exclusive. In this sense, Papineau’s argument is a more refined and accurate take on consciousness.
Papineau’s argument is also useful in the way it categorizes different kinds of consciousness; material consciousness refers to awareness of other, external things, while phenomenal consciousness is directed inward and manifests itself through self-awareness. This difference addresses the distinction between normal, ‘animal’ awareness and human awareness. In other words, this idea allows that many animals are indeed conscious, but not necessarily in the more profound sense (phenomenal). Thus, I think this kind of consciousness theory leaves room for the idea that humans are, indeed, unique and special in the animal kingdom (as most people are eager to believe), while at the same time rejecting ideas of property dualism that are unfounded and purely subjective. This sort of blending of ideas also makes Papineau’s argument highly appealing to me.
A physicalist account of consciousness is absolutely possible. It is unfair to deny this on the basis of an explanatory gap. Doing so would be similar to attributing rain to some immaterial substance or deity simply because we do not currently have the means of understanding what causes rain. Today, science can tell us a lot about the hydrologic cycle, and can accurately inform our understanding of rain. Such was not always the case. The lack of knowledge about physical phenomena that we currently understand has, throughout history, given rise to all sorts of what we now can look back at and call “wacky” ideas that attempt to explain a lack of information about physical facts through the use of non-materialistic alternatives. The explanatory gap is just another such attempt. In addition, physicalist theories are the only ones that have the potential to one day be empirically verified or proven. Theories which posit a non-physical aspect to consciousness will never be empirically provable, as non-physical facts/properties cannot be observed and do not necessarily follow the rules of causation that physical objects do. I believe that sticking with physicalism is essential to making progress on our understanding of the brain and consciousness, rather than giving up on it simply because we have not found the answers we are looking for yet.
I take Papineau’s phenomenal concepts strategy to be the best response to arguments against physicalism concerning consciousness.
I disagree with both of the property dualist claims. With respect to Jackson’s epiphenomenalism, I do not agree with his knowledge argument position that Mary learns something new upon leaving a black and white room. Along these lines, I do not think that she has all the possible knowledge about color if she has not seen it. Papineau’s claim elegantly solves this problem by defining phenomenal and material concepts as different in meaning but referring to the same thing. This allows for one to have knowledge of all the “facts” about color, yet leaves room for experiential (1st person) knowledge to be gained. In this case, the phenomenal concept of color is irreducible to a material concept but nonetheless explicable physically. For me, this provides a solution to the points of contention in the knowledge argument.
I also take issue with Chalmer’s naturalistic property dualism, especially with regard to its panpsychism implications. I find Chalmer’s idea to violate Occam’s razor, to me it does not seek out the simplest explanation to the question. In this sense, Papineau’s theory is better because it still allows for an account to be given of concepts that is purely physical, like that in functionalism, the psychoneural identity theory, or connectionism, etc. This more simple explanation is unlike naturalistic property dualism because it does not require phenomenal properties to be totally separate from physical properties.
In addition to these two property dualist view, I have trouble supporting the representational view. I find Harman’s response to the how feelings like love and mood are properties of representational content insufficient. In saying that qualia are features of representational content, his account fails to accurately describe complicated feelings in everyday human experiences. The phenomenal concepts approach overcomes this hurdle through its explanation of phenomenal states and their qualia. In creating a type of concept based on 1st person experience, Papineau manages to pin down the nature “what it is like to feel something.” Most importantly, he allows for physical explanation of these feelings/qualia/phenomenal concepts.
For these reasons, I take the phenomenal concepts strategy to be the best response to the arguments against physicalism. The way Papineau defines material and phenomenal concepts simply and accurately accounts for qualia, while allowing for physicalist accounts such as functionalism, the psycho-neural identity theory, or connectionism.
I think the best response against physicalism concerning consciousness is the phenomenal concepts strategy presented by Papineau. Personally I believe that property dualism creates more problems than it solves and therefore reject epiphenomenalism and natural property dualism. The mind-body interaction problem is very difficult to overcome, but without a solution property dualism cannot be accepted.
That being said, Jackson’s argument against straight physicalism is convincing. In the Case of Mary, I believe that having the experience of red and knowing physical facts about red are fundamental different. When Mary walks out of the black and white room she will undoubtedly learn something about the visual experience of red despite knowing all of the physical facts on human vision. Even in the future, after we know all the facts about the human visual system, Mary will learn something after walking out of the room.
According to Papineau Mary learns new phenomenal concepts to accompany her material concepts of red. You can only learn phenomenal concepts though experience rather than through third-person facts. Phenomenal concepts and material concepts differ in meaning, but refer to the same things. These two types of concepts are just two different ways of conceptualizing the same states.
The phenomenal concepts strategy is a hybrid between physicalism and property dualism, which is what I find appealing about it. I agree that experiences are fundamentally different from physical facts, but it is hard to believe that qualia are non-physical intrinsic properties. As a result, thinking about qualia as a different way to describe physical experiences seems plausible to me.
In last week blog post, I talked about why I did not think Jackson’s knowledge argument is logically plausible, mainly because I was not convinced that Mary can learn a new fact (of seeing red, for example) without having experienced it before.
However, I was not really sure how someone can fully argue against Jackson’s knowledge. Papienu seems to be just the right person to do the task. I really like his conceptual dualism because not only because it rejects the knowledge argument, but also because it subtly links the empirical research in Neuroscience to the unquantifiable “qualia”. I like Papienu’s idea of material being a 3rd person’s account of facts and phenomenal concepts being a 1st person’s account of the same set of facts. It makes perfect sense to me when Papienu claims that what Mary learns when she sees red things outside her room is simply a new concept of the same fact she already knew. Moreover, by defining qualia and brain states to as phenomenal and material concepts of the same fact, Papienu suggests a role neuroscience’s empirical studies of brain states play in the understanding of qualia.
Is a physicalist account of consciousness possible? Before learning about Papineau’s theory, I was more on board with Jackson’s knowledge argument, and therefore would have said “no” in response to this question. But now, I take the phenomenal concepts strategy/concept dualism to be the best theory concerning consciousness we’ve studied thus far. The Mary thought experiment as part of Jackson’s argument continues to seem right to me. She must have learned something knew because she gained the subjective experience of seeing red (or qualia/ phenomenal concepts) that would have been impossible for her to understand in the black and white room. Although I agree with this aspect of the knowledge argument, epiphenomenalism doesn’t make sense to me. It seems quite impossible that your conscious experience has no affect on your behavior, and that qualia are “just along for the ride”.
Papineau’s argument is appealing because it supports the Mary thought experiment while offering an alternative to epiphenomenalism—that is, allowing for a physical account of phenomenal concepts through functionalism or PNI, both of which are theories that make much more sense to me. By supporting subjective physicalism, it accepts that there is an explanatory gap between conscious experience and the physical (demonstrated by the Mary thought experiment), but denies the existence of an ontological gap by saying qualia are type or token identical to physical states (supporting functionalism/PNI).
Perhaps the most appealing part of Papineau’s argument, which was overlooked by the others, is the clear distinction between material (3rd person knowledge) and phenomenal concepts (1st person knowledge). This idea really hits home for me. I can learn everything material/factual about riding a bike by reading textbooks, listening to personal accounts, watching how-to movies, etc. But even with all this knowledge, there is something missing—the first person experience, or qualia—that is, what it feels like to actually be riding the bike. Papineau successfully accounts for this through his definition of phenomenal concepts. Furthermore, he points out that these two kinds of concepts (material and phenomenal), although they differ in meaning and method of acquisition, both refer to the same functional/physical states of the organism—they are just two different ways of describing the same states (i.e. states involved in bike riding). Similarly, the morning and evening stars are just two ways of knowing Venus, and water and H2O are just two ways of knowing water. He also posits that one cannot deduce phenomenal concepts (subjectivity) from material ones (objectivity) a priori, as implied earlier. The final claim Papineau makes is that phenomenal concepts are still reducible to physical phenomena, which follows logically to me. Currently, we don’t fully understand the complex patterns of neural firing that occurs with our every experience, but we still have a long way to go with (neuro)science, and I believe this will be achievable in the future.
I believe that a Physicalist account of consciousness is completely possible. Just because we do not understand something, doesn’t mean that greater, primal entities are the sole causes. Before Franklin, lightning was believed to be God’s wrath and that ringing church bells could ward stray bolts off. After dozens of bell ringers were killed, Franklin began to uncover the fallacy. Uranus’s anterograde orbit was believed to be proof of God, because it went contrary to current astronomical theory at the time. Before Darwin, creationism was the only logical way that we could understand our existence. One of the oldest fields of study, geology, was revolutionized in the 1950’s with the tectonic plate theory.
I believe that consciousness is not an ephemeral entity, but merely an aspect of our brains that we simply do not understand yet. Neuroscience has only risen to prominence in the last 30 years and there are much more basic questions that scientists are struggling to understand. Where/how are memories stored? Why do innate behaviors occur? How can we move in such a controlled way with such rampant neuronal firing? Consciousness is a huge and complex problem, but one in which philosophers are attempting to grapple with before science has caught up.
Frankly, I side with objective Physicalist views. Most of our perceptual groundwork occurs long before memory formation begins. How we move about, speak, taste, and respond to stimuli, happens at an incredibly young age. I believe that Mary understands much more about the color red than a month old infant. Indeed, if she had all of the physical information, she would know what the quale of red was like. But we never have all of the physical information. During our first few years of development, we learn to take in whatever information is presented to us and analyze it in a way that is concurrent with other similar situations. This is why optical illusions are so powerful, and even when we understand that they’re toying with us we cannot change our perception. Those early years are so foundational, that the subsequent experience often cannot override them.
Even if we do humor the thought experiment, I believe that if Mary spent her entire youth and education is a gray tone world she would, in addition to having inevitable mental issues, be unable to instantly perceive color. It would take her brain years to slowly begin to process color after that part of her brain had atrophied due to lack of use as a child. She would be swept into a sea of color and would have a very difficult time discriminating anything. Indeed, deaf children find it very difficult to learn to read without early auditory input. Even when cochlear implants are placed at 6 months, the part of brain dedicated to auditory processing has to play catch-up with the rest of perceptual processing site and the effects last a lifetime.
I do believe that a Physicalist account of consciousness is possible. Just give it a bit more time.
I do not believe that a physicalists account of consciousness is possible, this is because physical accounts of phenomenon’s and all thing physical should be empirical. I do not think that any of the philosophers have been able to give solid examples following their argument of exactly how consciousness can be reducible to the physicalism. Objective physicalists for example, reduce qualia to a physical phenomenon, so that when all the facts of a certain object are known, they can then experience that object from the facts, I find this to be very problematic. Subjective physicalism does seem to offer a slightly better view, by conveying that these physical phenomenon’s are subjective. However if a physicalists account of consciousness is possible, then it should be objective, because if it was not, then it would it would be unexplainable to a second party.
Physicalists account of consciousness must be objective to be physical. For example, if one was to read one of the initial chapters in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter that describes Hogwarts, and then see the movie, they would either think that the movie depicted the image in the book perfectly, or horrendously. I for one think that the book is better. Anyway, if conscious thoughts are physical, then anything concrete should create the same picture in different people, because if not then they cannot be physical.
Papineau’s argument is interesting as it holds that mental states are reducible to physical states, but that mental states are subjective. The flaw I see in his argument is where he conveys that mental states are subjective. Another flaw I see is in his divide of concepts into phenomenal concepts, the experience of the taste of ice-cream, and material concepts which is the description of the taste of ice-cream. He argues that one can gain two different types of concepts. For example, if before a person tastes ice cream they gain the physical concepts from a friend, and then when they taste it they gain the phenomenal concepts, I do not see how either of these give a physical account of the conscious experience of the taste of ice-cream. Sure they have gained all of the facts about ice-cream through the material concepts and experience, but this does not prove that the experience of ice-cream can be explained in physical terms to someone else.
Here is another example. There is a type of hat, a musical hat, that makes a certain sound whenever Jane feels an overt emotion. For example, if when Jane sees someone that she likes, the hat made a high note, and when she sees someone she does not like, the hat made a low note, her emotions could be conveyed. The conversion of the conscious emotions to musical notes is a medium through which one can understand their feelings, by reducing mental states to physical. However, this is something that needs to be used to convert mental states to physical states, a medium is needed, because this conversion, and the existence of mental states as non-physical substances is true.
It seems that every new theory thrown my way I take to be my new favorite. Looking back at week nine’s blog entry on Jackson’s argument against physicalism, I wrote that I was in favor of property dualism. Only a week has passed, and I have already changed my mind, as I now find concept dualism to be my new favorite. In explaining why I think that Papienu’s phenomenal concepts strategy is convincing (as of now…), I find it important to quickly recap Jackson’s “Knowledge argument”. Jackson’s knowledge argument is a challenge to the physicalist accounts of consciousness that argues that there is an “explanatory” gap between qualia and the physical, and that because of this gap we must posit an “ontological” gap as well. The ontological gap would imply that qualia are not token identical to physical properties. To explain in greater detail, the “explanatory gap” is a thesis that phenomenal experience cannot be completely explained in physical terms, and relatedly that it cannot be deduced from physical knowledge. Let me know explain where I find fault in Jackson’s argument, and how Papienu’s argument is more believable.
Jackson’s argument uses the case of Mary to explain that there is some information that is simply not physical information, for example the experience of seeing the color red. To me that theory seems common sense. I find it is hard to believe that a person would be able to have that full experience of red if they have never experienced it for themselves- understandable right? But why did Jackson draw the line of physicality there, at qualia? Although his argument seems to go along with my instinctual “common sense” I see no proof in favor of everything in the world being physical except qualia. That is where Papienu’s phenomenal concepts strategy comes into play. Basically, Papineau is claiming the same thought processes as Jackson, minus the existence of an “ontological” gap. That is, he rejects property dualism, but accepts a kind of concept dualism. So if we were to apply his argument to a case like Mary’s, when she knows all of the physical facts she will have material concepts, and once she sees red for the first time she will gain a new phenomenal concept of the experience of red. Here all knowledge is essentially physical, but there exist phenomenal concepts that we use to become introspectively aware of our phenomenal states and their qualia. I think that concept dualism is so appealing to me because it provides a sort of middle ground of explaining the world in physicalist terms, but also allowing there to be “something more” to gain when you experience something for yourself (i.e. a phenomenal concept).
The two forms of physicalism relevant to this question about consciousness are objective physicalism and subjective physicalism. Objective physicalism supports the idea that Mary must know everything about color, if she has access to all of the physical facts about seeing color, even if she has never experienced seeing color herself. Objective physicalists, like Dennet, believe that qualia are something that can be known, even if personal experience is lacking. Subjective physicalism requires the believer to let go of completely objective forms of physicalism. A subjective view on physicalism argues that consciousness is in fact wholly physical, however, there are characteristics of qualia that are not objective and can never be understood from an objective point of view. Qualia can only be known through the inside and this suggests that any completely objective view of the physical world will be incomplete. While objective physicalism does not account for any explanatory gap between someone who can experience seeing red and someone who can not, subjective physicalism, while still claiming physicalist properties, makes that distinction clear.
Last week, before I was familiar with Papineau’s phenomenal concepts strategy, I was on board with epiphenomenalism. I didn’t agree that Mary could know everything about the experience of seeing a color without ever having seen that color. However, I didn’t necessarily feel that qualia were non-physical properties. At that point, epiphenomenalism separated the characteristics of the physical information Mary could know and the information she could not know, before leaving the room, in a way that was appealing enough. After coming to understand the physical concepts strategy better though, I am changing my mind. While the phenomenal concepts strategy argues against objective physicalism, it does not claim that qualia are non-physical concepts. Simply, the difference between your first person experience and your knowledge of the physical is a matter of knowing something in the kinds of two different concepts. In this way, two people can have knowledge and be referring to the exact same thing, although the knowledge they have about that thing may be different. That doesn’t mean that either is wrong however. In reference to the Mary thought experiment again, this theory does not claim that Mary knows everything about seeing the color red, but it also doesn’t discount what she knows about seeing the color red. I find this argument PC and agreeable and therefore I take it to be the best response against objective physicalism.
It should be noted that while the phenomenal concepts strategy is consistent with subjective physicalism, strictly speaking, there are slight differences that arise in the way each explains the concepts at hand. While the phenomenal concepts exist and are necessary for the subjective experience, there is something about instantiating a physical state of consciousness that is unique enough that only the individual who is able to instantiate that physical conscious state can fully grasp the experience of that conscious state. Phenomenal concepts in this way are not explainable on their own.
There are three principal arguments against a physicalist explanation of consciousness: Jackson’s knowledge argument (which perhaps has more to do with experience of qualia than phenomenal consciousness—then again, the two are intimately connected), Chalmer’s failure of functional explanation argument, and the conceivability arguments that include the unconscious zombies and the inverted spectrum arguments. While Chalmers’ natural property dualism and Harman’s representationalism arguments have their merits, I think the best response to the arguments against a physicalist account of consciousness is Papineau’s phenomenal concepts view. This view holds that mental states are reducible to physical states (thus accepting physicalism), but that subjectivity is irreducible to objectivity. That is, there are two fundamental types of concepts: material and phenomenal concepts. We can only learn phenomenal concepts from experience with them (first person experiences). It’s apparent how this idea deals with Jackson’s thought experiments—it simply draws a line between third person experiences we could learn from a textbook and first person experiences that are impossible to describe (something I have always considered as being compatible with physicalism). I’m not sure what Papineau’s response would be to Chalmers’ failure of functional explanation argument (even once we explain the functions of consciousness, we still do not know why these functions are accompanied by consciousness). I do know what my response is—I think Chalmers has a somewhat overblown notion of consciousness. When you get down to it, what is consciousness? Psychologists might say it is advanced working memory—that is, humans are conscious because we can hold more information relevant to making a decision in our minds than most animals can (this kind of idea is quite similar in essence to Burge’s continuous scale of consciousness). So if we explain the easy problems of consciousness, we have an answer for the hard problems of consciousness (and a functionalist answer at that)—qualia help humans make decisions that increase our biological fitness. Consciousness is the decision-making process that interprets qualia and connects them to internal and external stimuli. I think the phenomenal concepts view would deny the plausibility of the zombie thought experiment, because it posits that the mental is reducible to the physical, but I am not totally sure what Papineau’s response would be.
I think Chalmers’ natural property dualism is a really interesting idea. It explains thoughts I used to have when I studied physics better than I could—even though physicists can explain many of the natural properties of the world, there is a huge amount of information that they do not understand (or as Chalmers puts it, they can not define the intrinsic properties of just about anything). It is comforting to think of the universe as conscious in some deep way (as the Dalai Lama does), but there’s not much evidence for this idea other than saying you can’t prove it is not true.
I think that Papineau is spot on with his phenomenal concepts strategy. The big issue with Jackson’s knowledge argument apropos Mary is the conclusion Jackson draws. There is nothing except clever and inadequate reasoning to support the idea that upon Mary seeing red, and thereby “learning” something new, physicalism falls apart. Dennet gets closer to the point. Who’s to say that Mary “knowing everything there is to know” will afford her the same phenomenal experience as seeing red? It’s absurd and implausible to imagine that someone could explain to me what a new spice (call it xspice) tastes like and that I could, from her description alone, have an experience anything akin to tasting xspice. What does make sense, though, is that, after having xspice described, I have some materialist concept of what xspice is like. After tasting it (i.e., after having the experience of tasting it) my concept of what xspice is like has changed. I now have a phenomenal concept of the spice. There is nothing in Papineau’s argument to suggest that the universe is non-physical. Tasting xspice (seeing red for the first time) is a physical experience that affords us a new (phenomenal) concept of that experience. In that way, it offers a comfortable balance between my desire that the universe be explained in physical terms and the difficulties that qualia present.
However, Papineau’s claim that qulia are type identical to physical states is troubling. I don’t see how he purports to solve the inverted spectrum issue, and I hope to discuss this more in class. By and large, though, I like the idea of concept dualism. It is intuitive and instructive, and I believe it fills in a lot of the gaps left behind by other theories.
April 25, 2014 at 10:52 am
I definitely believe that a physicalist account of consciousness is possible. Out of the various theories we have covered so far, none of them provide a thoroughly convincing argument for or against physicalism and the overall nature of the mind. However, there are certain issues raised by the various theories that I am inclined to accept.
Harman’s theory of representationalism is an attractive theory because it aims to preserve functionalism. The issue of qualia is tackled head-on. He says that qualia are representations of the world that arise from external properties of what we are seeing. I see no substance in the illusion argument raised against representationalism because it does not do anything to disprove Harman’s theory. The mental image of a bent stick that is obtained from seeing a stick half-submerged in water cannot be an intrinsic property of our mental state because of the very nature of the way that mental image is obtained. The light reflecting off the portions of the stick above the water surface and below the water surface reach our eyes from different angles, causing an illusion of bentness. But our consciousness of this refraction causes us to understand that the bentness is not a mental image arisen from some inherent quality of our mental states. Rather, it is a property of the representation of the object we observe. However, when it comes to certain emotional states and perspectival experience, to view them as representations of external properties seems to be less intuitive, and I cannot bring myself to accept it. Also, the entire theory seems to be saying that the real world around us is not actually, directly experienced by us- we just experience representations, which is a view I cannot get behind.
Papineau’s theory to me seems to be a nice way to tie all the loose ends together. I like the fact that he presents the view that there are two ways of thinking about the same substance. It seems to present a very refreshing perspective on the arguments against physicalism by explaining many of the aspects of the ‘mental’ as ‘phenomenal concepts’, rather than actual, existent entities. I am not fully convinced with his view, but it definitely seems to be the best one we have been presented with so far.
April 25, 2014 at 2:59 am
What do you take to be the best response to the arguments against physicalism concerning consciousness? (epiphenomenalism; natural property dualism; representationalism; conceptual dualism)
Conceptual dualism presents a strong intuitive pull. Papineau’s central premise asserts that humans have two ways of understanding our world. This fits well into a twenty-first century conception of our existence, where empirical, factual knowledge is valued, but individual experience is (of course) not eliminated. To restate Papineau’s argument: everything is material, yet we have two different means by which to understand any given physical entity: one from a removed, third-person knowledge perspective and the other from the first-person introspective experiential perspective.
This argument gives an explanation for the difference between understanding based on a “learned/book knowledge” and understanding based on experience, which Jackson attempts to delineate in the knowledge argument.
The Dennet materialist response to Jackson’s Mary thought experiment would be to assert that Mary’s full factual knowledge of the visual system renders the knowledge argument inert because she could not have learned anything new upon going outside: to know all of the physical properties is to know the phemonenal qualities, i.e. what it is like. However, nearly everyone in class had a visceral reaction to that materialist argument. To call the experience of redness a fact seemed unpalatable. However, property dualism and the concession to some non-causative mental aspect of our existence also seems implausible. To me, property dualism is akin to taking the problem of experience and qualia, and not actually dealing with it, but putting it up on a shelf where it exists, but does nothing. As we have seen through the ability arguments, experiential understanding arguable gives us ‘something more’ in our mental perception of the world, in terms of our ability to introspect and imagine using the new “redness.” Therefore, as Papineau asserts, property dualism is implausible, and much better explained through the innate difference we perceive between the two types of understanding, as he labels concepts (ways of conceptualizing the world).
Although not perfect (and it still allows for an explanatory gap), Papineau’s argument is thus far the only argument that allows for some knowledge that may be beyond human explanation, but doesn’t deny the extraordinary advances of scientific discovery of the material basis of much of our existence. Therefore, at this point in our societal conception of the world, Papineau’s has the most appeal based on what we know and can conceive of knowing
April 25, 2014 at 12:17 am
We have recently covered three main challenges to a physicalist account of consciousness: the knowledge argument about the existence of an explanatory gap between qualia and the physical, Chalmers’ ‘failure of functional definition’ argument, and the conceivability arguments (which argue that zombies and inverted spectra are possible). We have also looked at four possible responses to these challenges, of which I find myself supporting Papineau’s Phenomenal Concepts Strategy. This is not because I find it particularly compelling or revolutionarily shocking, but more because I find the alternatives unconvincing or lacking.
To begin with, I find the idea of property dualism infeasible, and as such I must dismiss epiphenomenalism and natural property dualism immediately. It is worth noting that Chalmer gives us no definitive reason to accept his panpsychism over ephiphenomalism other than that epipheninomalism’s denial of experience’s causal efficacy seems bizarre, an argument that I find severely lacking. All the same, I reject both of these responses because they rely on property dualism, which I do not believe can be true.
I admit that I do not have as firm a grasp of Harman’s representationalism as I would like. The idea that all qualia are simply representations of something else does not seem intuitively correct (though I admit that intuitions can be tragically incorrect). This seems to be unable to account for certain emotional states or moods, and at the very least is a weird way to view qualia.
This leaves Papineau’s idea of phenomenal concepts, or concept dualism. This seems to capture the difference between physical facts about red and red qualia that so many critics of physicalism were so concerned with (through the introduction of material and phenomenal concepts). It does not, however, necessitate a rejection of physicalism or an acceptance of property dualism. By declaring that phenomenal concepts are conceptually irreducible to physical states, Papineau allows for fundamental differences between mental states and other physical states. I do not, however, understand why it will always be impossible to deduce phenomenal concepts from material concepts a priori. Given that we could know a posteriori, it seems that with extensive enough study, we could find reliable correlations that we could use to determine a prior which phenomenal concept was formed by different material concepts.
April 25, 2014 at 12:17 am
I’m going to start by saying that I don’t think I’m really ‘convinced’ by any of these arguments one way or the other. In other words, it seems unlikely to me that I’m going to be changing the way I look at the world now that I’ve been exposed to all of them. I can’t quite pinpoint why this is, but it could be because we’ve seen so many convincing-sounding theories get fundamentally disproven on the basis of 1 or 2 simple thought experiments. Alternatively, it could be because none of the theories even approach what one might call ‘being accessible’ – that is – none of them are presented in a way that is especially exciting or intuitive. I understand that some of the concepts are fairly complicated and hard to conceptualize on their own, but adding in dozens of complex and seemingly unnecessary terms doesn’t really help to address that. I find myself craving a ‘simple english’ version of each of the theories… a version that I can read and think about without having to consult a dictionary and an encyclopedia of philosophy topics. Put another way, I wish that the wording of each of the theories wasn’t such a barrier to actually thinking about them. As it stands, I find myself starting to lose interest before I really achieve understanding, and this is caused (at least in part) by the fact that all of the philosophical ‘jargon’ seems to distance the theories (conceptually) from the actual issues that they’re trying to address.
All of that being said, I think the theory that makes the most sense to me is the phenomenal concept strategy. The main reason for this, I think, is the fact that it seems to ‘hedge its bets’ in a certain sense. In other words, it acknowledges that there’s something about qualia that we can’t understand without experiencing them, but it also incorporates physicalist and functionalist ideas. This (somewhat surprisingly) actually makes sense to me; it makes sense that we can’t reduce phenomenal concepts to material ones, since that would imply that we could learn what red looks like simply by learning all about our visual systems. At the same time, it also makes sense that we should be able to identify a certain neural pathway that is identical to seeing red (an idea that very much agrees with my inner neuroscientist). To use another example, it seems reasonable to assume that we could never really know what pain feels like simply by knowing lots of information about pain, but it also seems reasonable to assume that there is a neural pathway that is fairly reliably associated with the feeling of pain. Indeed, the very difference between phenomenal and material concepts (knowing about a feeling versus knowing what it feels like) seems refreshingly intuitive – it makes perfect sense to think that there might be a fundamental gap between the ability to recognize a feeling (i.e. “that person is clearly in pain”) and the ability to experience it yourself (i.e. “oh, so that’s what pain feels like”).
All in all, I find the PCS to be the most intuitive and understandable of the theories that we’ve looked at recently, especially when it’s compared to theories like representationalism (“you don’t actually experience the real world at all!”).
PS. Apologies if I misunderstood the prompt or if my writing doesn’t make much sense – it’s very late and my brain is totally fried.
April 25, 2014 at 12:15 am
Qualia are a tricky topic. I see the internal mind and the external world as two different manifestations of the same entity that then causes a balanced interaction between the mind and the external world. Thus, it is difficult to side with only one theory of mind, as opposed to taking the most comprehensive sections of theories and combining them to create a new theory.
Overall, I reject physicalism due to the presence of the ontological gap, property dualism conceding that there are deeper mental substances, and the difficulty of explaining 1st person experience of phenomenal concepts. I agree that our mental states are representations of the world; in order to form a mental state one must take pre-experienced concepts and if complex, combine them in the imagination. We are able to experience through our abilities. These abilities are made possible by our physical body: sight, touch, ect. Thus, the ability hypothesis and representationalism are given credit here. Yet, I would like to take it one step further; yes, as property dualism states, physical entities give rise to mental entities, yet I want to use this as a gateway to substance dualism, which I will not discuss here.
I agree that qualia are non-physical, for how could they be, if the imagination realm exists outside of the physical realm? Qualia are indeed caused by physical stimuli, ability perception, but then the mind does something else with this physical stimuli. It interprets it, kind of like representationalism, but something that is intrinsic of the mind, as Chalmer might say with naturalistic property dualism, phenomenalism, and panpsychism, with a missing dash of substance dualism to bring it full circle.
April 24, 2014 at 10:54 pm
I am convinced by the physicalist account of consciousness, and especially drawn to Papineau’s conceptual dualsim. Papineau responds to the knowledge argument by saying that when Mary leaves the black and white room and experiences red from the first time, something new is gained. She knew all the facts about red before she left the room, and this status remains unchanged. When she leaves the room, Mary gains a new concept upon experiencing red. The new perspective could not be attained by simply “knowing the facts” about red; the color must be experienced first-hand. However, the thing that is gained by seeing red is a concept, which can accounted for in physical terms. Papineau’s view appeals to me because in considering the knowledge argument, I kept running into a problem: when Mary leaves the room, I think she has a new experience of seeing red which she couldn’t fully understand before, but I don’t think that this new experience has to be attributed to the acquisition of “new physical facts”. It seems like something different to me, and Papineau explanation of a new perspective, an understanding of a concept seems to make sense. Qualia is a concept that seems always just out of reach. We can interrogate our minds about what we think the essence of quaila is, but I think the “way things seem to be to us” will remain abstract and unsolveable. Papineau’s argument makes sense to me because it recognizes something beyond just the physical facts, but takes the idea of how it feels to experience something down from the pedestal of qualia and defines it as something I can grapple with. Papineua defines brain states and qualia as material concepts about a fact. This ultimately physicalist account of consciousness convinces me.
April 24, 2014 at 10:28 pm
Out of the many responses that we have read arguing against the possibility of physicalism, Papineau’s phenomenal concepts strategy resonates the most with me. Papineau makes a distinction between material concepts and phenomenal concepts, stating that both are necessary in order to have a truly complete understanding of the world around us. By separating phenomenal concepts from material concepts, Papineau allows for two seemingly disparate ways of viewing the world to meld together – and this gives a more holistic approach to understanding human consciousness and how we perceive the world. Papineau agrees with Jackson’s argument for an explanatory gap but rejects the ontological gap, thereby allowing for qualia to be identical to physical properties. This, for me, is the most appealing aspect of Papineau’s argument: phenomenal concepts, which are ones we discover introspectively, can be explained physically. By defining phenomenal concepts in this way, Papineau includes functionalism and the PNI theory to be possible explanations for our internal processes. But he does not limit our consciousness to just that. Material concepts, which are part of the third person, causal world, also affect how we view certain things – this is why Papineau’s argument is one of concept dualism. We then also have an externalist perspective to understanding the world. The really remarkable thing about Papineau’s theory is that it argues that we need both physical and external accounts of everything in order to have true understanding, and I think that this is definitely the most accurate way of describing human perception and comprehension that we have encountered thus far.
April 24, 2014 at 9:32 pm
Although I often appreciate the scientific seeming and rational side of physicalism, I understand why many people would argue against it. It is reassuring, almost comforting, to think that there is another side to the mind apart from our physical self (and pretty scary to think of ourselves as purely physical). However, the arguments we have read about in response to physicalism have not yet convinced me. First of all, I am not convinced that Harmon’s represenationalism can truly account for things such as emotions and feelings. Yes, having qualia as representative of our external environment makes sense, but I do not think it can fully account for our more internal feelings about the world. Property dualism does not convince me either- the idea that all objects are physical yet have physical and mental properties to them does not really seem to capture the essence of consciousness. Like I wrote more about last week, this view seems to place the importance on the object, while in fact consciousness is a personal, individual, experience- it is the properties of an individual’s perceptions that create consciousness, not the objects themselves. I do not really understand how an object itself can have a mental aspect to it. To me, epiphenomenalism makes more sense- the idea that qualitative properties are caused by physical properties but the qualitative properties themselves do not cause other physical properties or events. Although this does seem to invalidate the idea of free will, it at least can account for all ranges of experience. The reason this does not seem plausible to me is that consciousness seems too complex to have developed evolutionarily and yet play no role in our survival. I also do see some logic in Papineau’s phenomenal concepts strategy- I like that he views phenomenal, or experiencial, facts as different from physical facts. This is a good response to Jackson’s “Case of Mary”- Papineau argues that Mary can know all the physical facts about seeing the color red, yet she can learn a new phenomenal fact or concept about the color red when she experiences it first hand. However, this just seems like a different way to think about what we “know” about something. I still am much more convinced by physicalism and theories that take the neural aspects of our experience and current scientific knowledge into account.
April 24, 2014 at 9:20 pm
At first, I felt the most support for the Jackson’s knowledge argument, but when presented with Papineau’s view of the knowledge argument, I believe he has the best response. In Jackson’s knowledge argument, Mary does know all the physical facts about red when she is in the black and white room, but she has never experienced red. When she leaves the room and experiences red for the first time, Jackson believe that Mary has learned new facts about red. Originally, I agreed with this argument. I did not think it was possible for Mary to imagine the color red without experiencing it. Yet, I had trouble agreeing with Jackson that the experience of seeing red was necessarily new facts. Papineau’s argument solved this dilemma. Papineau agrees with Jackson that the experience of seeing red is different from knowing all the physical facts, but no new facts are learned when you experience red. Rather a new concept is learned. Its not new facts but a new point of view. Anybody can know all the facts about red and that is one concept of red from the third person point of view. When you experience red though, you see it in a completely different light and one that can only come from the first person point of view. I believe that the argument for the different point of views presented during an experience is the best.
April 24, 2014 at 9:20 pm
I agree with Jennifer and Madeline (below) concerning the best response to the arguments against physicalism concerning consciousness as being Papineau’s phenomenal concepts strategy. This strategy rejects property dualism, accepting conceptual dualism to hold that the difference between your first person experience and your knowledge of the physical is a matter of knowing something in terms of material and phenomenal concepts, concepts that allow us to understand the same things in the world. For example, redness is a qualitative property arising from a specific brain state, both different ways of knowing the same thing. Mary, when leaving her colorless world, does not learn anything new about the world when she sees the rose. All that she learns are just new concepts of the same knowledge of which she was already aware.
It could be interpreted by Papineau’s analysis that phenomenal concepts are “quotational” concepts—concepts that contain the states to which they refer. He argues that actual phenomenal states will be embedded within phenomenal concepts. In other accounts of phenomenal concepts, these concepts have been conceptually isolated. The phenomenal concepts strategy makes the most sense to me in terms of a response to arguments against physicalism because it allows cases such as people with color inversion/blindness to be conceivable. It can be interpreted that, although the physically duplicate person may perceive colors differently, no phenomenal concepts are determined to apply to them solely based on this physical duplicity. Therefore, instead of having “this” experience, the duplicate would have “that” one.
According to proponents of the phenomenal concepts strategy, as humans, we possess a special set of concepts for referring to our own experiences, which are conceptually isolated from any other concepts that we possess. Due to the fact that phenomenal concepts are isolated, a physicalist would conclude that gaps in explanation could exist, such as zombies or inverts. Chalmers’ argument against this strategy is problematic in itself, committing a “fallacy of equivocation”. If Chalmers’ argument does not seem to stand a chance against the phenomenal concepts strategy, then this strategy can be seen as an even more powerful response to the arguments against physicalism concerning consciousness.
April 24, 2014 at 9:16 pm
I am not sure whether I think that a physicalist account of consciousness. I guess I would say that I don’t think any of the arguments we have read so far give us reason to believe that it must be. Why? Well, it seems like one of the things that is most fundamentally at issue here is whether qualia are intrinsic properties of experience. If they are, then (I think) they would not be amenable to functional explanation, and thus functionalism would be leaving something out. Another way to say this might be that the inverted spectrum argument, if one buys it, could be marshalled against all physicalist arguments. Some of the thinkers we’ve read are very skeptical of qualia as intrinsic properties of experience — Harman, especially, thinks that our impression that this is so is a misguided mirage, and Dennett, though we haven’t covered his ideas in detail, seems to think along similar lines. Still, I must admit that I feel very leery of buying these sorts of views. They are staggeringly counterintuitive to me. That’s not always the best indicator of things being right or wrong, but I’d like to at least try to hash out why they strike me as so backwards.
I liked the metaphor we discussed in class about qualia being something like the ‘paint’ of our mental representations. However, I don’t think I agree with Harman that this ‘paint’ is utterly inaccessible to our conscious experiences. I think it is probably inaccessible to the concepts and language that we use to communicate with one another, but I feel pretty strongly that our experience is not limited to the sorts of things these concepts can tackle — it seems to me like we can have experiences which are ineffable, and possibly beyond or outside of conceptual thinking. To put this differently, my intuition is that we can have experiences of pure aisthesis, experiences of seeing which are not seeing-as, experiences T. S. Eliot describes in Four Quartets: “when, under ether, the mind is conscious but conscious of nothing”. I guess really the only evidence I have for this is my own experience, which I’m sure would not be very compelling to people like Harman… but I sort of wonder if they might encounter something similar, under the right sort of circumstances of introspection. For instance, though I’m certainly no expert on it, the limited experience I have with mindfulness meditation has kind of felt to me like the practice of watching my mental ‘paint’ dry. My first year seminar (with Matt and Gioia! 🙂 ) consisted largely in this, and a lot of the way I conceived of (ha, somewhat ironic) the meditation practice was in terms of unsticking my experience from the ‘maps’ — concepts, representations, pattern-finding mechanisms — that certain parts of my brain usually impose upon it automatically. Now, I definitely didn’t ever achieve this sort of unsticking, because those parts of my brain (and everyone’s respective brain, pretty much) are very talkative and busy. But there were moments and flickerings that gave me the feeling that it really is possible; e.g., I remember starting to become conscious of my internal monologue as something like a babble of meaningless sounds instead of words with semantic content, or becoming aware that I really couldn’t see color in my peripheral vision, or seeing the houses out the windows in front of us not really look like houses anymore. That might not sound like very conclusive or dramatic evidence of non-representational qualia, but I think it still points me in the direction of it — at the very least it seems possible to peel back a whole lot of the layers of representational content that our perceptual experience usually has. Maybe there’s some point in the metaphorical onion which one arrives at and can’t peel back any further, but I don’t know… it seems to me at that point one would have arrived at something pretty different from what we normally think of as representation. I really do think the subject requires more phenomenological investigation, though — at least in order for me to feel like I’ve got a grasp on it.
Now that I write all this I’m realising I haven’t even gotten around to addressing Papineau’s phenomenal concepts strategy, and I’ve already generated quite a mass of verbiage, so don’t want to go on too much longer — I guess I’ll just say for now that I agree an explanatory gap doesn’t necessarily entail an ontological gap, but I don’t think we can really conclude that there definitely ISN’T one either. Corollary to this, it seems a little like overstepping to me to say that we can KNOW a posteriori that phenomenal concepts refer to the same things as their physical/functional correlates, just because they are so consistently correlated. I feel like here a conceivability argument could be pressed into service, not to say that the mental and the physical MUST be categorically incommensurable, but simply to say that it’s imaginable they might be, without contradicting any of the data we have about neuroscience. And if we were to go this far, we’d already one foot in the boat that’s headed to property-dualism-land. I also think the question of WHY out phenomenal concepts are the particular way they are (if one wants to hold that they do have intrinsic properties!) is puzzling and outstanding, especially if it can’t be predicted from or conceptually reduced to a third person depiction of the situation.
April 24, 2014 at 9:05 pm
I find that the phenomenal concepts strategy provides the best response to the arguments against physicalist conceptions of consciousness. Literature by Papineau integrates the epiphenomenal “explanatory gap” and physicalist notions of experience – that is, it acknowledges the space between qualia and physical properties, yet also denies that there is an ontological gap. This strategy, also known as subjective physicalism/inflationary physicalism, claims that everything is physical (no substance dualism here) but that concepts can be either physical phenomenal. A material and phenomenal concept can be applied to one state, and this would not denote two different things – the point of reference would be the same but the meanings would be different. Therefore, functional state can be experienced in the third-person, causal sense, as well as in an experiential and qualitative sense. Further, phenomenal concepts are not reducible to material concepts, yet both refer to the same functional properties.
Though it may seem wishy-washy to straddle the lines of functionalism and epiphenomenalism and reject property dualism all together, Papineau’s phenomenal concepts proposal is intriguing and comprehensive. It is certainly believable, as it combines all the appealing elements of both sides: it acknowledges the explanatory gap, leaving some mystery open as to how we can bridge the phenomenal and the physical, yet it provides an ontological answer that satisfies functionalism enthusiasts by establishing a conceptual dichotomy. Physicalists will be happy to know that there is nothing immaterial in substance or in property; the “qualitative” is just a concept that applies simultaneously to any physiological/functional state. Yet Papineau’s argument does not reject the idea of experience, allowing the question “what does it feels like?” to remain a part of the essence of mental states.
All in all, this strategy does a good job of integrating past arguments into a single cohesive and comprehensive stance. It is appealing and believable because it takes into account many different perspectives on consciousness, and works to pick out details that are both logical and plausible from each.
April 24, 2014 at 9:00 pm
Along with many people who have posted on the blog so far, I feel most comfortable with Papineau’s phenomenal concepts strategy (leading to conceptual, but not property or substance, dualism) as an account of consciousness. The beauty of Papineau’s theory is that it does not reduce the concept of, say, knowing by third person objective knowledge what it is like to see red (as Mary does when she is inside the room) to the actual experience of seeing red (as she experiences when she leaves the room). Papineau’s distinction between these two mental states is essential in order to give a satisfying account of qualia. Jackson wants to say that Mary learns something over and above physical facts when she leaves the room. But does she really? Yes, it is true that one of the premises of Jackson’s knowledge argument is that she knows all the physical facts about seeing red. And yet, it seems important to make a distinction, as Papineau does, between knowing those facts from a first person point of view as opposed to a third person point of view. When Mary is inside the room, she sees the physical facts about seeing red from a third person point of view, say, in diagrams about which regions are activated in the brain when a person sees red. When she leaves the room, she does not gain some new non-physical knowledge about the world, but rather her brain enters precisely the brain state that she had been studying inside the room. And yet, now it is her brain that is in that brain state, as opposed to her brain being in a brain state thinking about that brain state. That is, the brain state she is in when she sees red is different from the brain state she is in when she is studying what it is like to see red–a crucial difference. This is intuitive and it is difficult to see how it would make sense otherwise. An important benefit, in my opinion, of Papineau’s phenomenal concepts strategy is that it does not force us out of physicalism, which I tend to want to hold on to unless I have conclusive evidence that there must be something non-physical about consciousness. Although I like Chalmers’ idea of panpsychism and the ethical implications it would have if it were true, I don’t feel convinced of it yet. Historically, science has proven repeatedly that phenomena for which we do not have physical explanation turn out to be physically explained. Still, if anything were to be unexplainable in physical terms, it would probably be consciousness.
April 24, 2014 at 9:00 pm
There are three primary criticisms of the physicalist account of consciousness. These arguments include Jackson’s knowledge argument, Chalmers’ “failure of functional definition” argument, and the conceivability arguments. I feel that Papineau’s phenomenal concepts strategy not only provides the best response to those arguments against physicalism, but that it also presents a compelling and intuitive argument that feels correct. First, Jackson wants to argue that there is a fundamental distinction between qualia and physical properties such that qualia are actually epiphenomena. Jackson’s evidence for this argument is that Mary learns new facts (the experience of redness) upon leaving the room, and since she already knew all physical facts, the new qualitative experience must be non-physical. Yet we have mentioned several problems with Jackson’s argument in class, and Papineau does an excellent job of refuting it. Through concept dualism, Papineau accepts that there is an explanatory gap but not an ontological gap between consciousness and the physical. This means that there are material concepts understandable from a 3rd person point of view and phenomenal concepts understandable only from a 1st person point of view. Returning to Mary, Papineau separates “redness” from 3rd person facts one could learn from a textbook. Thus, the phenomenal experience of redness cannot be deduced from physical facts Mary knows, but when Mary does experience the phenomenal concept of redness, she only gains a new concept but not a new fact. Critically, the phenomenal concept Mary gains is still explicable physically.
The “failure of functional definition” argument posits that qualia and consciousness are not functionally explicable, and thus physicalism is false. However, I feel that consciousness and qualia certainly can be explained functionally. Consciousness increases the evolutionary fitness of human beings. Being conscious provides an innate awareness of one’s surroundings that can be extremely useful. For example, my consciousness allows me to suppress instincts and biological drives such as thirst when it is beneficial for me to do so. If I’m hiking in the woods and become thirsty, my body may tell me to drink from the cool stream nearby, but I stop myself from doing so because I’m conscious that it will likely make me sick later. An unconscious organism would be driven only by its biological needs, and it would thus drink the water. Thus, consciousness can be an extremely valuable tool in terms of evolutionary fitness.
Finally, the conceivability zombie argument posits that physicalism is false because the unconscious zombies would violate the principle of logical supervenience of the mental on the physical. I’m not sure what Papineau’s exact response would be, but I feel that the conceivability argument doesn’t prove anything. Just saying that something is conceivable does not mean it has any relevance. Any argument can be refuted or supported if the fact that something is conceivable is taken as legitimate evidence in support of or against a given argument.
April 24, 2014 at 9:00 pm
I think that Papineau is spot on with his phenomenal concepts strategy. The big issue with Jackson’s knowledge argument apropos Mary is the conclusion Jackson draws. There is nothing except clever and inadequate reasoning to support the idea that upon Mary seeing red, and thereby “learning” something new, physicalism falls apart. Dennet gets closer to the point. Who’s to say that Mary “knowing everything there is to know” will afford her the same phenomenal experience as seeing red? It’s absurd and implausible to imagine that someone could explain to me what a new spice (call it xspice) tastes like and that I could, from her description alone, have an experience anything akin to tasting xspice. What does make sense, though, is that, after having xspice described, I have some materialist concept of what xspice is like. After tasting it (i.e., after having the experience of tasting it) my concept of what xspice is like has changed. I now have a phenomenal concept of the spice. There is nothing in Papineau’s argument to suggest that the universe is non-physical. Tasting xspice (seeing red for the first time) is a physical experience that affords us a new (phenomenal) concept of that experience. In that way, it offers a comfortable balance between my desire that the universe be explained in physical terms and the difficulties that qualia present.
However, Papineau’s claim that qulia are type identical to physical states is troubling. I don’t see how he purports to solve the inverted spectrum issue, and I hope to discuss this more in class. By and large, though, I like the idea of concept dualism. It is intuitive and instructive, and I believe it fills in a lot of the gaps left behind by other theories.
April 24, 2014 at 9:01 pm
Woops sorry I somehow accidentally copy and pasted Nathan LaBarba’s response into my response–my actual response is above.
April 24, 2014 at 8:59 pm
I believe that a physicalist account is not only possible, but necessary for developing a cohesive interpretation of consciousness, whether they involve intricacies that are tangible or not. While it may be difficult to report on phenomena such as qualia, we should not hastily assume that they are properties separate from the physical simply because there exists a semantic barrier for explaining said phenomena.
Which is why Papineau’s conceptual dualism is so appealing to me, since it separates qualia and facts as material and phenomenal concepts while refraining from making the huge leap that qualia are nonphysical. I can easily understand why qualia is often placed in a different category as more tangible properties, but I would not go as far as to say that notions such as the Knowledge argument is enough to debunk the physicalist perspective. If anything, these arguments are distracting us from the core problems we face in giving a physical account of the universe. Naturalistic property dualism makes a distinction between the “easy” and “hard” problems of consciousness, and I honestly believe that we will never be able to solve the “hard” problems, in part because we don’t really need to in order to come to the realization that consciousness exists, whether you want to call it as such or as a series of physiological properties working together to provide the complete experience.
April 24, 2014 at 8:57 pm
I definitely believe that a physicalist view of consciousness is not only conceivable, but very possible. Like many have already stated, I think that with the forwarding of neuroscience, we will close the explanatory gap and be able to explain and accept physicalism. When I think back to Jackson’s thought experiment, I did have a hard time believing that Mary could walk into a color world and know from red was from the objective facts. Last week, I proposed that we do perhaps perceive the frequencies of color in an objective way subconsciously and therefore, Mary could conceivably know what red was. Nevertheless, I find it hard to turn the world into an objectively physical place.
Before reading Papineau, I was attracted to property dualism and epiphenomenalism. I liked epiphenomenalism because it separated out the physical from the experiential, ie. qualia. I like to think that there is more to the world than strictly objective facts, that the experience does matter. However, I would say that Papineau’s phenomenal concepts strategy fills in the current scientific gaps better than any theory. I again, felt like it was a little bit of a cop out, but it eases my mind more than the other theories. There are fundamentally two different concepts. But consciousness, is still essentially left fully developed. Maybe some day, with the advancement with of science and further questioning, we can really close the explanatory gap.
April 24, 2014 at 8:51 pm
The phenomenal concept strategy is the most convincing response to physicalism; much of the appeal of this theory is the fact that it seems not to be too extreme and provides explanations for many of the questions that crop up from choosing a purely physicalist or a purely property dualist point of view when considering consciousness. Concept dualism accounting for the explanatory gap is one of the appealing facets of the theory. The explanatory gap seems like something intuitive; there is more to consciousness than something physical. However, removing physicality from all facets of conscious knowledge and experience is not a leap I’m willing to make quite yet. The two concepts of knowledge described by concept dualism — material concepts and phenomenal concepts — seem to accept some of the most rational aspects of physicalism which filling the explanatory gap. Phenomenal concepts fill the explanatory gap by allowing for a definition that encapsulates the difference between experiencing something and possessing knowledge of it. Of course, this experience is some form of knowledge, which concept dualism allows for. Material concepts do seem separate from phenomenal concepts, something that especially makes sense in the context of the thought experiment regarding Mary. Mary’s knowledge of everything regarding the color “red” is not invalid, but it still does not encompass everything regarding the experience of red. Phenomenal concept strategy is the simplest explanation so far of consciousness that takes into account some aspects of physical experience; this is why it’s the most appealing theory (so far) regarding consciousness.
April 24, 2014 at 8:49 pm
I think a physicalist account of consciousness is the only ultimate possibility, but none of the philosophers thus far have given a legitimate description of how it can happen. As no such adequate theory has been suggested, we are left with an explanatory gap, leaving a dualist theory the most plausible based on what we know for now. Ultimately though I think physicalism will unseat dualism and provide a comprehensive explanation of consciousness. We live in a physical world, constantly dealing in cause and effect. As far as I’m concerned, something non-physical cannot give rise to something physical, so the only way to explain our consciousness is in a physicalist theory. (Assuming that you believe your consciousness has bearing on your actions, which I do; if you think phenomena and consciousness have no effect on experience , then epiphenomenalism gives an adequate description, and you are set). But, we have yet to discover a way to ascribe our conscious thought to a physical theory.
Papineau tries to give a solution, saying that phenomenal concepts (comprising of abilities but not reducible to them) and material concepts are just two ways of thinking of things, and provides a physical account with cause and effect. But here he does not really show how it would be possible that these phenomenal concepts are functional; he does not pinpoint cause and effect, so I see it really as a dualist theory but given physicalist descriptions.
Chalmers provides an interesting approach with his panpscyhism; phenomena are intrinsic to the outside world, and our experience is merely representation. The trouble here comes when we try to describe love, moods or other emotions. Are they really just representations of the outside world? I don’t think so. Similarly when you see stars or have a hallucination, these would be representations of the outside world. Again though I think this is something happening inside our head, a lens created by our consciousness, not just a representation of the world. Here rises the explanatory gap, the separator between dualists and physicalists.
For now we don’t have an answer, so to maintain these aspects of consciousness as intrinsic to myself rather than the outside world, I must ascribe to a dualist account to give them efficacy, but as I stated before, I don’t believe there is any way for non-physical to give rise to physical, so in that way there must be a physicalist description, once we have the means to discover it.
April 24, 2014 at 8:45 pm
What do you take to be the best response to the arguments against physicalism concerning consciousness?
Like the majority of the responses, I personally float towards Papineau’s “phenomenal concept strategy.” Andrew’s response made me laugh and he had a very valid point. “Just because we do not understand something, that doesn’t mean that greater, primal entities are the sole causes.” A physicalist account of consciousness is completely possible! Consciousness is not a simple concept, but the concept dualism idea works for me. This argument rejects property dualism, which claims that there is only one kind of substance—physical. But, however, there are two different kinds of properties—physical and mental. Therefore, in this view, the mental states cannot be reduced to physical states. Also, this view holds that there are two fundamentally different types of concepts of mental states: phenomenal concepts and material concepts. The implications for this view then hold that mental states are reducible to physical states and that subjectivity is irreducible to objectivity. This argument eases my mind in a way. The phenomenal concept part that acknowledges our first person only understandable point of view specifically satisfies my belief because it leaves room for the idea of individuality! It is disheartening to think that we are not special or significant. In Papineau’s argument, we can acknowledge that science had only tell us so much and that it has its limitations. Personally, this is completely fine with me. I believe my experience of drinking/tasting coffee is different then other peoples.
April 24, 2014 at 8:44 pm
I believe that Papineau’s phenomenal concepts strategy provides the best response to the arguments raised against a physicalist account of consciousness. Thus far, we have considered the main arguments against physicalist consciousness to be the knowledge argument, the inverted spectrum/zombie conceivability arguments, and Chalmers’ “failure of functional definition” argument. While Papineau does not address the inverted spectrum argument or the failure of functional definition arguments directly, Papineau’s view solves the issues raised against physicalism by the knowledge argument deftly. With respect to this argument, Papineau reaches an attractive compromise between the much harsher versions of consciousness proposed by physicalism and epiphenomenalism; although Mary has knowledge of all the physical concepts regarding color and vision, she still lacks the 1st person phenomenal concept of what exactly it “feels” like to see red until it is presented to her – thus affording a type of explanatory gap but still retaining physicalism by claiming additionally that we can explain phenomenal concepts physically. Although I don’t know how Papineau might respond to the failure of functional definition argument, it seems as if he would have a relatively effective defense against the conceivability arguments, mainly that those arguments assume an ontological gap between qualia and physical properties, and that this simply is not the case.
Another aspect of Papineau’s solution that I found to be particularly appealing is that, from my point of view, it relied almost solely on logic as opposed to on broadly hypothetical thought experiments that normally leave me uncertain as to the validity of the argument. However, one facet of Papineau’s argument that I still do find troubling is his assertion that qualia are token identical to physical states despite the differences he wants to claim between phenomenal and physical concepts. It seems to me that if we can describe a conscious mental state – such as the qualia experienced while eating an apple – in physical terms (for example, using the psychoneural identity theory), then Papineau’s basis for his overall argument, that these two types of concepts differ in meaning, begins to collapse. How then does this differ from strict physicalism in which mental states are identical to physical states? A phenomenal concepts supporter might retort that there is some difference between qualia and a phenomenal concept, however I think this would be a difficult gap to bridge regarding Papineau’s aforementioned claims about qualia as solely a type of first-person phenomenal concept. This is a divide that I hope to discuss further in the upcoming discussion and lectures.
April 24, 2014 at 8:32 pm
I believe that the best response to the arguments against physicalism concerning consciousness is the phenomenal concepts strategy proposed by David Papineau. His idea of conceptual dualism is almost a middle ground between the physicalist accounts of consciousness and the views of property dualism concerning consciousness. The key to Papineau’s view is that he makes a distinction between material concepts and phenomenal concepts. Phenomenal concepts are concepts of qualia that are only understandable from a first-person perspective while material concepts are those which are understandable from the third-person perspective and are items in the world. Also, both phenomenal concepts and material concepts have the same referent, but are different at the level of meaning.
What I find most attractive about this claim is that it acknowledges and incorporates the intuitive notion that phenomenal experience, or qualia, is different than other material facts of concepts. This view states that subjectivity can’t be reduced to objectivity since we can never know phenomenal concepts by studying material concepts. In this way, this view answers the problem of the knowledge argument against physicalism proposed by Jackson. Based on Papineau’s view, however, he would agree that Mary would learn a new fact when she exits the black and white room and experiences the color red for the first time. The explanatory gap, which is what the knowledge argument heavily leans on is therefore accepted as true in the phenomenal concepts strategy. I find this to be very appealing because an explanatory gap between the physical and qualia is highly intuitive because consciousness seems to be an amorphous concept that is also highly subjective and not easily understood or grasped. However, although this view concedes the explanatory gap, it is still a physicalist view because Papineau’s argument denies that there is an ontological gap between the physical and qualia, which means that it holds that mental states and therefore consciousness are reducible to physical states.
This conceptual dualism is appealing because it really does incorporate intuitions of concept dualism while maintaining a physicalist view of consciousness. When thinking from the lens of a scientist, I do not want to concede that qualia are non-physical and some sort of other entity outside of the physical world. However, when considering my own experiences and when I try to give an account of qualia, it is difficult not to acknowledge that there is some aspect of phenomenal experience that are inherently subjective and not fully understandable and reducible to objectivity. Therefore, the phenomenal concept strategy gives a satisfactory physical account of qualia as defining it as ontologically physical in nature, but allows for a fundamental distinction to be drawn between material concepts and phenomenal concepts. So, I believe that the phenomenal concepts strategy gives the best account of consciousness that we have seen so far in this course.
April 24, 2014 at 8:28 pm
Intuitively speaking, Papineau’s “phenomenal concept strategy” seems, to me, to be the most satisfying response to arguments against phsyicalism. After reading Jackson’s article in favor of property dualism last week I was definitely left unsatisfied with the implications of his argument. I think the “Mary” thought experiment is effective in that it points out important differences between qualia and so called “physical facts”, but it seems like an extraordinary jump in logic to conclude the existence of property dualism from this example. Many things can’t be learned without experience, but this does not seem like an adequate reason to throw out physicalism completely. If I memorized all the mechanics involved in riding a bike, I would still have to practice a fair amount in order really learn how to ride one. We shouldn’t take this to mean that some ultimate non-physical fact is standing in the way of me riding a bike perfectly on my first try. This kind of reasoning seemed to be leading me toward the ability hypothesis, but I can’t say that I found this explanation more satisfying than property dualism. Looking back, though I wouldn’t have articulated it this way a week ago, I think that Jackson’s argument just misses out on the fact that certain physical facts need to be learned via experience. Although humans are able to conceptualize hybrid/ intermediate experiences (like seeing a unicorn) without having experienced them, it’s very hard for us to fully “know” things we haven’t experienced. For instance, according to popular psychology (not sure how true this actually is), we can’t “invent” new faces: whenever we think or dream of people we give them faces of people we have already seen. Here there is no ability being performed, but there is just something about our brains that prevents us from making the conceptual jump involved in creating new qualia, in bridging the explanatory gap. All this to say, Papineau’s acceptance of both physicalism and the explanatory gap really appeal to me. I’m not sure if I completely buy the particular ideas of phenomenal versus material concepts, but I like where his overall argument ends up.
April 24, 2014 at 8:22 pm
A physicalist account of consciousness seems entirely possible, and I find Papineau’s concept dualism the most persuasive argument for that possibility. It is perhaps the first physicalist theory we have studied to overcome the explanatory gap without resorting to the weak argument of ‘we might not know yet but we will,’ and it presents a plausible and rather intuitively satisfying response for the knowledge argument (experience is not a matter of different facts but of different perspectives on the same facts). Concept dualism is the only response to these criticisms of physicalism that does not seem to violate any of the more intrinsic beliefs about human experience to which I subscribe.
Epiphenomenalism and panpsychism, especially, seem problematic because they somehow undermine ‘facts’ that inform the way we navigate the world on a daily basis. Epiphenomenalism denies that mental events have any purpose or causality, and panpsychism claims everything has some kind of experience because mind is universal. These are two arguments rest on tenets I cannot help but reject purely out of gut instinct. I know that is weak reasoning, but I find myself embracing it anyway for two reasons. First, how can we claim mental events have no effects on the physical world, but use purely mental reasoning to make that argument? There is no functional explanation for the mental processes required to reason out such a theory, so it seems almost self-contradictory. If mental states and representations are merely incidental, then belief in epiphenomenalism is as well, so who cares? Second, the universal mind is problematic to me because it takes concepts regarding Cartesian privacy to the next level. It simultaneously requires that we be unaware of the ‘experiences’ of thermostats (at least I am unaware of them!) and believe that they are analogous to the complex experiences we personally have. Then again, given the instinctual nature of these thought processes I have to acknowledge the possibility that they are indicative of a cultural inheritance I am not evolved enough to ignore.
Representationalism is a slightly more believable argument for physicalism than epiphenomenalism and panpsychism, but, like we said in class it lacks the ability to adequately explain the more complex representations of emotions. This is a significant shortcoming and leads me to only partially support the theory, meaning I can get behind the fundamental reasoning, but cannot accept it as a completely adequate theory of consciousness.
April 24, 2014 at 8:20 pm
I agree with the idea that the main differences between phenomenal and material aspects of experience can be explained through the mechanism by which we gain the experience. I believe that property dualism is an unhelpful theory that does not make a bold enough claim as substance dualism and doesn’t offer much of an explanation as to what these properties are. Having facts about qualia seems to be a stretch. Instead having different modes of thinking about a material fact or arriving at the same knowledge via different modes makes much more sense. A non-reductionist view of property dualism faces the same issues as substance dualism in its analysis of how mental properties and physical properties are causally related. If there are some mental properties, which are not reducible to physical structures then how do we explain the role of those properties and where they arise from if not from the physical world? Conceptual dualism provides a much more comprehensible explanation by claiming that it is not the actual properties but the ways in which we realize that these properties are inherently different that is important. The reason why our knowledge of all the material facts of red still doesn’t give us an accurate image of color is not because there are some non-material facts of the worlds. It is due to a manner of understanding what red is. While the inherent properties/facts/aspects of redness are not changed regardless of whether we read about them in the encyclopedia or see them in person, they are realized via different mechanisms and stored in different regions of the brain. The “mould” or concept of red we gain from looking at an apple can later be used to imagine what red looks like. Reading an encyclopedia would not allow one to create this image introspectively. The reason why this theory seems more reasonable is because it gives an account as to how neural structures can give rise to consciousness without merely saying that the mental and the physical are exactly identical. By doing so it provides us with an alternative account of how mental states and physical states are related and allows for mental states to have a physical basis, while still having their own functional role.
April 24, 2014 at 8:18 pm
Right now, I seem to be leaning towards Papineau’s concept dualism. I especially like how he dealt with the knowledge argument while still recognizing the explanatory gap. It does seem logical that Mary would not be able to get the qualia of red while still inside her room. However, it seems more reasonable that this is due to differing methods of how we can learn things, than being due to an ontological gap. When first hearing of the knowledge argument, it seemed important that, while in the room, Mary was learning physical facts 2nd hand through symbolic representations from certain scientific equipment, which would not put her brain into the same states as if she directly experienced red. It seems reasonable to propose than phenomenal and physical concepts can refer to the same things but be irreducible to each other, while still both being physically explainable. However, something about the knowledge argument bothered me in general, but I’m not sure how much it actually affects the arguments’ outcomes. The knowledge argument uses the idea of a “physical fact” to mean some kind of objective, and in Mary’s case scientific, truth. Mary gets these from various machinery and previously conducted experiments. It seems fairly obvious that whatever society she lives in must be fairly advanced, so their science is probably very trustworthy. However, can she truly know all those physical facts with 100% certainty, without a doubt of any possible exceptions? Perhaps their science is so far advanced that this is possible, but it seems unlikely that she could know whether or not she does know those facts for certain. Also, while those facts are collected outside Mary, she only has access to them through qualia. She experiences them only as qualia of various colors and shapes, etc, and then, according to Papineau, it seems she manages to extract the objective, abstract physical facts from the qualia. Could physical facts be reduced to qualia then?
April 24, 2014 at 8:11 pm
While I do believe that the further development of neuroscience may lead us to discover physical evidence and explanation of consciousness (ahem, Dennett), I do not think that any of the theories we have now suffice to do so. As it stands, we cannot define consciousness in physicalist terms and each of the four theories do their best, but are left wanting. Representationalism and concept dualism both seem like unfinished arguments to me, they don’t do a sufficient job of explaining consciousness related to experiences like love.
Substance dualists are closer, they at least acknowledge that phenomenal properties are in some way different from physical events, but even property dualism doesn’t, to me, appear 100% physicalist. I lean towards epiphenomenalism (though am not completely swayed by it) because, with the scientific data we have now, I have no choice but to believe that phenomenal experience must in some way be removed from, though still connected to my body. I am not Cartesian, I don’t believe in substance dualism, but there is an appeal to the idea that some part of us is removed from our bodies. But this leaves us with similar Cartesian problems. What connects epiphenomena to their physical causes? Once caused, can they exist without the other? Can they be replicated? These questions leave me looking toward, but not convinced by, the property dualist picture.
April 24, 2014 at 8:10 pm
Physicalism is, in my opinion, completely plausible. Between the views we have examined that address the possibility (or lack thereof) of physicalism, the one that resonates that most with me is Papineau’s Phenomenal Concepts strategy. I believe that this is the most accurate theory of consciousness that we have read; as I interpreted it, the theory suggests that qualia and physical states are not necessarily different. This idea debunks theories of property dualism. And, being a scientifically minded person, I find it hard to believe that mental states and consciousness are on another level than physical states. Still, Papineau’s theory retains that there is an explanatory gap between consciousness and physical states, but this idea and the idea that qualia are physically derived are not mutually exclusive. In this sense, Papineau’s argument is a more refined and accurate take on consciousness.
Papineau’s argument is also useful in the way it categorizes different kinds of consciousness; material consciousness refers to awareness of other, external things, while phenomenal consciousness is directed inward and manifests itself through self-awareness. This difference addresses the distinction between normal, ‘animal’ awareness and human awareness. In other words, this idea allows that many animals are indeed conscious, but not necessarily in the more profound sense (phenomenal). Thus, I think this kind of consciousness theory leaves room for the idea that humans are, indeed, unique and special in the animal kingdom (as most people are eager to believe), while at the same time rejecting ideas of property dualism that are unfounded and purely subjective. This sort of blending of ideas also makes Papineau’s argument highly appealing to me.
April 24, 2014 at 7:55 pm
A physicalist account of consciousness is absolutely possible. It is unfair to deny this on the basis of an explanatory gap. Doing so would be similar to attributing rain to some immaterial substance or deity simply because we do not currently have the means of understanding what causes rain. Today, science can tell us a lot about the hydrologic cycle, and can accurately inform our understanding of rain. Such was not always the case. The lack of knowledge about physical phenomena that we currently understand has, throughout history, given rise to all sorts of what we now can look back at and call “wacky” ideas that attempt to explain a lack of information about physical facts through the use of non-materialistic alternatives. The explanatory gap is just another such attempt. In addition, physicalist theories are the only ones that have the potential to one day be empirically verified or proven. Theories which posit a non-physical aspect to consciousness will never be empirically provable, as non-physical facts/properties cannot be observed and do not necessarily follow the rules of causation that physical objects do. I believe that sticking with physicalism is essential to making progress on our understanding of the brain and consciousness, rather than giving up on it simply because we have not found the answers we are looking for yet.
April 24, 2014 at 7:47 pm
I take Papineau’s phenomenal concepts strategy to be the best response to arguments against physicalism concerning consciousness.
I disagree with both of the property dualist claims. With respect to Jackson’s epiphenomenalism, I do not agree with his knowledge argument position that Mary learns something new upon leaving a black and white room. Along these lines, I do not think that she has all the possible knowledge about color if she has not seen it. Papineau’s claim elegantly solves this problem by defining phenomenal and material concepts as different in meaning but referring to the same thing. This allows for one to have knowledge of all the “facts” about color, yet leaves room for experiential (1st person) knowledge to be gained. In this case, the phenomenal concept of color is irreducible to a material concept but nonetheless explicable physically. For me, this provides a solution to the points of contention in the knowledge argument.
I also take issue with Chalmer’s naturalistic property dualism, especially with regard to its panpsychism implications. I find Chalmer’s idea to violate Occam’s razor, to me it does not seek out the simplest explanation to the question. In this sense, Papineau’s theory is better because it still allows for an account to be given of concepts that is purely physical, like that in functionalism, the psychoneural identity theory, or connectionism, etc. This more simple explanation is unlike naturalistic property dualism because it does not require phenomenal properties to be totally separate from physical properties.
In addition to these two property dualist view, I have trouble supporting the representational view. I find Harman’s response to the how feelings like love and mood are properties of representational content insufficient. In saying that qualia are features of representational content, his account fails to accurately describe complicated feelings in everyday human experiences. The phenomenal concepts approach overcomes this hurdle through its explanation of phenomenal states and their qualia. In creating a type of concept based on 1st person experience, Papineau manages to pin down the nature “what it is like to feel something.” Most importantly, he allows for physical explanation of these feelings/qualia/phenomenal concepts.
For these reasons, I take the phenomenal concepts strategy to be the best response to the arguments against physicalism. The way Papineau defines material and phenomenal concepts simply and accurately accounts for qualia, while allowing for physicalist accounts such as functionalism, the psycho-neural identity theory, or connectionism.
April 24, 2014 at 7:42 pm
I think the best response against physicalism concerning consciousness is the phenomenal concepts strategy presented by Papineau. Personally I believe that property dualism creates more problems than it solves and therefore reject epiphenomenalism and natural property dualism. The mind-body interaction problem is very difficult to overcome, but without a solution property dualism cannot be accepted.
That being said, Jackson’s argument against straight physicalism is convincing. In the Case of Mary, I believe that having the experience of red and knowing physical facts about red are fundamental different. When Mary walks out of the black and white room she will undoubtedly learn something about the visual experience of red despite knowing all of the physical facts on human vision. Even in the future, after we know all the facts about the human visual system, Mary will learn something after walking out of the room.
According to Papineau Mary learns new phenomenal concepts to accompany her material concepts of red. You can only learn phenomenal concepts though experience rather than through third-person facts. Phenomenal concepts and material concepts differ in meaning, but refer to the same things. These two types of concepts are just two different ways of conceptualizing the same states.
The phenomenal concepts strategy is a hybrid between physicalism and property dualism, which is what I find appealing about it. I agree that experiences are fundamentally different from physical facts, but it is hard to believe that qualia are non-physical intrinsic properties. As a result, thinking about qualia as a different way to describe physical experiences seems plausible to me.
April 24, 2014 at 7:41 pm
In last week blog post, I talked about why I did not think Jackson’s knowledge argument is logically plausible, mainly because I was not convinced that Mary can learn a new fact (of seeing red, for example) without having experienced it before.
However, I was not really sure how someone can fully argue against Jackson’s knowledge. Papienu seems to be just the right person to do the task. I really like his conceptual dualism because not only because it rejects the knowledge argument, but also because it subtly links the empirical research in Neuroscience to the unquantifiable “qualia”. I like Papienu’s idea of material being a 3rd person’s account of facts and phenomenal concepts being a 1st person’s account of the same set of facts. It makes perfect sense to me when Papienu claims that what Mary learns when she sees red things outside her room is simply a new concept of the same fact she already knew. Moreover, by defining qualia and brain states to as phenomenal and material concepts of the same fact, Papienu suggests a role neuroscience’s empirical studies of brain states play in the understanding of qualia.
April 24, 2014 at 7:01 pm
Is a physicalist account of consciousness possible? Before learning about Papineau’s theory, I was more on board with Jackson’s knowledge argument, and therefore would have said “no” in response to this question. But now, I take the phenomenal concepts strategy/concept dualism to be the best theory concerning consciousness we’ve studied thus far. The Mary thought experiment as part of Jackson’s argument continues to seem right to me. She must have learned something knew because she gained the subjective experience of seeing red (or qualia/ phenomenal concepts) that would have been impossible for her to understand in the black and white room. Although I agree with this aspect of the knowledge argument, epiphenomenalism doesn’t make sense to me. It seems quite impossible that your conscious experience has no affect on your behavior, and that qualia are “just along for the ride”.
Papineau’s argument is appealing because it supports the Mary thought experiment while offering an alternative to epiphenomenalism—that is, allowing for a physical account of phenomenal concepts through functionalism or PNI, both of which are theories that make much more sense to me. By supporting subjective physicalism, it accepts that there is an explanatory gap between conscious experience and the physical (demonstrated by the Mary thought experiment), but denies the existence of an ontological gap by saying qualia are type or token identical to physical states (supporting functionalism/PNI).
Perhaps the most appealing part of Papineau’s argument, which was overlooked by the others, is the clear distinction between material (3rd person knowledge) and phenomenal concepts (1st person knowledge). This idea really hits home for me. I can learn everything material/factual about riding a bike by reading textbooks, listening to personal accounts, watching how-to movies, etc. But even with all this knowledge, there is something missing—the first person experience, or qualia—that is, what it feels like to actually be riding the bike. Papineau successfully accounts for this through his definition of phenomenal concepts. Furthermore, he points out that these two kinds of concepts (material and phenomenal), although they differ in meaning and method of acquisition, both refer to the same functional/physical states of the organism—they are just two different ways of describing the same states (i.e. states involved in bike riding). Similarly, the morning and evening stars are just two ways of knowing Venus, and water and H2O are just two ways of knowing water. He also posits that one cannot deduce phenomenal concepts (subjectivity) from material ones (objectivity) a priori, as implied earlier. The final claim Papineau makes is that phenomenal concepts are still reducible to physical phenomena, which follows logically to me. Currently, we don’t fully understand the complex patterns of neural firing that occurs with our every experience, but we still have a long way to go with (neuro)science, and I believe this will be achievable in the future.
April 24, 2014 at 6:29 pm
I believe that a Physicalist account of consciousness is completely possible. Just because we do not understand something, doesn’t mean that greater, primal entities are the sole causes. Before Franklin, lightning was believed to be God’s wrath and that ringing church bells could ward stray bolts off. After dozens of bell ringers were killed, Franklin began to uncover the fallacy. Uranus’s anterograde orbit was believed to be proof of God, because it went contrary to current astronomical theory at the time. Before Darwin, creationism was the only logical way that we could understand our existence. One of the oldest fields of study, geology, was revolutionized in the 1950’s with the tectonic plate theory.
I believe that consciousness is not an ephemeral entity, but merely an aspect of our brains that we simply do not understand yet. Neuroscience has only risen to prominence in the last 30 years and there are much more basic questions that scientists are struggling to understand. Where/how are memories stored? Why do innate behaviors occur? How can we move in such a controlled way with such rampant neuronal firing? Consciousness is a huge and complex problem, but one in which philosophers are attempting to grapple with before science has caught up.
Frankly, I side with objective Physicalist views. Most of our perceptual groundwork occurs long before memory formation begins. How we move about, speak, taste, and respond to stimuli, happens at an incredibly young age. I believe that Mary understands much more about the color red than a month old infant. Indeed, if she had all of the physical information, she would know what the quale of red was like. But we never have all of the physical information. During our first few years of development, we learn to take in whatever information is presented to us and analyze it in a way that is concurrent with other similar situations. This is why optical illusions are so powerful, and even when we understand that they’re toying with us we cannot change our perception. Those early years are so foundational, that the subsequent experience often cannot override them.
Even if we do humor the thought experiment, I believe that if Mary spent her entire youth and education is a gray tone world she would, in addition to having inevitable mental issues, be unable to instantly perceive color. It would take her brain years to slowly begin to process color after that part of her brain had atrophied due to lack of use as a child. She would be swept into a sea of color and would have a very difficult time discriminating anything. Indeed, deaf children find it very difficult to learn to read without early auditory input. Even when cochlear implants are placed at 6 months, the part of brain dedicated to auditory processing has to play catch-up with the rest of perceptual processing site and the effects last a lifetime.
I do believe that a Physicalist account of consciousness is possible. Just give it a bit more time.
April 24, 2014 at 5:45 pm
I do not believe that a physicalists account of consciousness is possible, this is because physical accounts of phenomenon’s and all thing physical should be empirical. I do not think that any of the philosophers have been able to give solid examples following their argument of exactly how consciousness can be reducible to the physicalism. Objective physicalists for example, reduce qualia to a physical phenomenon, so that when all the facts of a certain object are known, they can then experience that object from the facts, I find this to be very problematic. Subjective physicalism does seem to offer a slightly better view, by conveying that these physical phenomenon’s are subjective. However if a physicalists account of consciousness is possible, then it should be objective, because if it was not, then it would it would be unexplainable to a second party.
Physicalists account of consciousness must be objective to be physical. For example, if one was to read one of the initial chapters in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter that describes Hogwarts, and then see the movie, they would either think that the movie depicted the image in the book perfectly, or horrendously. I for one think that the book is better. Anyway, if conscious thoughts are physical, then anything concrete should create the same picture in different people, because if not then they cannot be physical.
Papineau’s argument is interesting as it holds that mental states are reducible to physical states, but that mental states are subjective. The flaw I see in his argument is where he conveys that mental states are subjective. Another flaw I see is in his divide of concepts into phenomenal concepts, the experience of the taste of ice-cream, and material concepts which is the description of the taste of ice-cream. He argues that one can gain two different types of concepts. For example, if before a person tastes ice cream they gain the physical concepts from a friend, and then when they taste it they gain the phenomenal concepts, I do not see how either of these give a physical account of the conscious experience of the taste of ice-cream. Sure they have gained all of the facts about ice-cream through the material concepts and experience, but this does not prove that the experience of ice-cream can be explained in physical terms to someone else.
Here is another example. There is a type of hat, a musical hat, that makes a certain sound whenever Jane feels an overt emotion. For example, if when Jane sees someone that she likes, the hat made a high note, and when she sees someone she does not like, the hat made a low note, her emotions could be conveyed. The conversion of the conscious emotions to musical notes is a medium through which one can understand their feelings, by reducing mental states to physical. However, this is something that needs to be used to convert mental states to physical states, a medium is needed, because this conversion, and the existence of mental states as non-physical substances is true.
April 24, 2014 at 4:43 pm
It seems that every new theory thrown my way I take to be my new favorite. Looking back at week nine’s blog entry on Jackson’s argument against physicalism, I wrote that I was in favor of property dualism. Only a week has passed, and I have already changed my mind, as I now find concept dualism to be my new favorite. In explaining why I think that Papienu’s phenomenal concepts strategy is convincing (as of now…), I find it important to quickly recap Jackson’s “Knowledge argument”. Jackson’s knowledge argument is a challenge to the physicalist accounts of consciousness that argues that there is an “explanatory” gap between qualia and the physical, and that because of this gap we must posit an “ontological” gap as well. The ontological gap would imply that qualia are not token identical to physical properties. To explain in greater detail, the “explanatory gap” is a thesis that phenomenal experience cannot be completely explained in physical terms, and relatedly that it cannot be deduced from physical knowledge. Let me know explain where I find fault in Jackson’s argument, and how Papienu’s argument is more believable.
Jackson’s argument uses the case of Mary to explain that there is some information that is simply not physical information, for example the experience of seeing the color red. To me that theory seems common sense. I find it is hard to believe that a person would be able to have that full experience of red if they have never experienced it for themselves- understandable right? But why did Jackson draw the line of physicality there, at qualia? Although his argument seems to go along with my instinctual “common sense” I see no proof in favor of everything in the world being physical except qualia. That is where Papienu’s phenomenal concepts strategy comes into play. Basically, Papineau is claiming the same thought processes as Jackson, minus the existence of an “ontological” gap. That is, he rejects property dualism, but accepts a kind of concept dualism. So if we were to apply his argument to a case like Mary’s, when she knows all of the physical facts she will have material concepts, and once she sees red for the first time she will gain a new phenomenal concept of the experience of red. Here all knowledge is essentially physical, but there exist phenomenal concepts that we use to become introspectively aware of our phenomenal states and their qualia. I think that concept dualism is so appealing to me because it provides a sort of middle ground of explaining the world in physicalist terms, but also allowing there to be “something more” to gain when you experience something for yourself (i.e. a phenomenal concept).
April 24, 2014 at 3:38 pm
The two forms of physicalism relevant to this question about consciousness are objective physicalism and subjective physicalism. Objective physicalism supports the idea that Mary must know everything about color, if she has access to all of the physical facts about seeing color, even if she has never experienced seeing color herself. Objective physicalists, like Dennet, believe that qualia are something that can be known, even if personal experience is lacking. Subjective physicalism requires the believer to let go of completely objective forms of physicalism. A subjective view on physicalism argues that consciousness is in fact wholly physical, however, there are characteristics of qualia that are not objective and can never be understood from an objective point of view. Qualia can only be known through the inside and this suggests that any completely objective view of the physical world will be incomplete. While objective physicalism does not account for any explanatory gap between someone who can experience seeing red and someone who can not, subjective physicalism, while still claiming physicalist properties, makes that distinction clear.
Last week, before I was familiar with Papineau’s phenomenal concepts strategy, I was on board with epiphenomenalism. I didn’t agree that Mary could know everything about the experience of seeing a color without ever having seen that color. However, I didn’t necessarily feel that qualia were non-physical properties. At that point, epiphenomenalism separated the characteristics of the physical information Mary could know and the information she could not know, before leaving the room, in a way that was appealing enough. After coming to understand the physical concepts strategy better though, I am changing my mind. While the phenomenal concepts strategy argues against objective physicalism, it does not claim that qualia are non-physical concepts. Simply, the difference between your first person experience and your knowledge of the physical is a matter of knowing something in the kinds of two different concepts. In this way, two people can have knowledge and be referring to the exact same thing, although the knowledge they have about that thing may be different. That doesn’t mean that either is wrong however. In reference to the Mary thought experiment again, this theory does not claim that Mary knows everything about seeing the color red, but it also doesn’t discount what she knows about seeing the color red. I find this argument PC and agreeable and therefore I take it to be the best response against objective physicalism.
It should be noted that while the phenomenal concepts strategy is consistent with subjective physicalism, strictly speaking, there are slight differences that arise in the way each explains the concepts at hand. While the phenomenal concepts exist and are necessary for the subjective experience, there is something about instantiating a physical state of consciousness that is unique enough that only the individual who is able to instantiate that physical conscious state can fully grasp the experience of that conscious state. Phenomenal concepts in this way are not explainable on their own.
April 24, 2014 at 3:33 pm
There are three principal arguments against a physicalist explanation of consciousness: Jackson’s knowledge argument (which perhaps has more to do with experience of qualia than phenomenal consciousness—then again, the two are intimately connected), Chalmer’s failure of functional explanation argument, and the conceivability arguments that include the unconscious zombies and the inverted spectrum arguments. While Chalmers’ natural property dualism and Harman’s representationalism arguments have their merits, I think the best response to the arguments against a physicalist account of consciousness is Papineau’s phenomenal concepts view. This view holds that mental states are reducible to physical states (thus accepting physicalism), but that subjectivity is irreducible to objectivity. That is, there are two fundamental types of concepts: material and phenomenal concepts. We can only learn phenomenal concepts from experience with them (first person experiences). It’s apparent how this idea deals with Jackson’s thought experiments—it simply draws a line between third person experiences we could learn from a textbook and first person experiences that are impossible to describe (something I have always considered as being compatible with physicalism). I’m not sure what Papineau’s response would be to Chalmers’ failure of functional explanation argument (even once we explain the functions of consciousness, we still do not know why these functions are accompanied by consciousness). I do know what my response is—I think Chalmers has a somewhat overblown notion of consciousness. When you get down to it, what is consciousness? Psychologists might say it is advanced working memory—that is, humans are conscious because we can hold more information relevant to making a decision in our minds than most animals can (this kind of idea is quite similar in essence to Burge’s continuous scale of consciousness). So if we explain the easy problems of consciousness, we have an answer for the hard problems of consciousness (and a functionalist answer at that)—qualia help humans make decisions that increase our biological fitness. Consciousness is the decision-making process that interprets qualia and connects them to internal and external stimuli. I think the phenomenal concepts view would deny the plausibility of the zombie thought experiment, because it posits that the mental is reducible to the physical, but I am not totally sure what Papineau’s response would be.
I think Chalmers’ natural property dualism is a really interesting idea. It explains thoughts I used to have when I studied physics better than I could—even though physicists can explain many of the natural properties of the world, there is a huge amount of information that they do not understand (or as Chalmers puts it, they can not define the intrinsic properties of just about anything). It is comforting to think of the universe as conscious in some deep way (as the Dalai Lama does), but there’s not much evidence for this idea other than saying you can’t prove it is not true.
April 24, 2014 at 2:44 pm
I think that Papineau is spot on with his phenomenal concepts strategy. The big issue with Jackson’s knowledge argument apropos Mary is the conclusion Jackson draws. There is nothing except clever and inadequate reasoning to support the idea that upon Mary seeing red, and thereby “learning” something new, physicalism falls apart. Dennet gets closer to the point. Who’s to say that Mary “knowing everything there is to know” will afford her the same phenomenal experience as seeing red? It’s absurd and implausible to imagine that someone could explain to me what a new spice (call it xspice) tastes like and that I could, from her description alone, have an experience anything akin to tasting xspice. What does make sense, though, is that, after having xspice described, I have some materialist concept of what xspice is like. After tasting it (i.e., after having the experience of tasting it) my concept of what xspice is like has changed. I now have a phenomenal concept of the spice. There is nothing in Papineau’s argument to suggest that the universe is non-physical. Tasting xspice (seeing red for the first time) is a physical experience that affords us a new (phenomenal) concept of that experience. In that way, it offers a comfortable balance between my desire that the universe be explained in physical terms and the difficulties that qualia present.
However, Papineau’s claim that qulia are type identical to physical states is troubling. I don’t see how he purports to solve the inverted spectrum issue, and I hope to discuss this more in class. By and large, though, I like the idea of concept dualism. It is intuitive and instructive, and I believe it fills in a lot of the gaps left behind by other theories.